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The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest ice sheet in the world, and the water which it holds, if completely melted, would raise sea levels globally by 7.2 metres (24 ft). [25] [26] Due to global warming, the ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate, adding almost 1 mm to global sea levels every year. [27]
Greenland ice sheet as seen from space. An ice sheet is a body of ice which covers a land area of continental size - meaning that it exceeds 50,000 km 2. [4] The currently existing two ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica have a much greater area than this minimum definition, measuring at 1.7 million km 2 and 14 million km 2, respectively.
Sea ice changes may also have indirect effects on animal health due to changes in the transmission of pathogens, impacts on animals' body condition due to shifts in the prey-based food web, and increased exposure to toxicants as a result of increased human habitation in the Arctic habitat. [118]
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago, according to a new comprehensive international study. Using 50 different ...
[109]: 595–596 The complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would cause over 5 metres (16 ft) of sea level rise. [110] In contrast to the West Antarctic ice sheet, melt of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to take place more gradually over millennia. [109]: 595–596 Sustained warming between 1 °C (1.8 °F) (low confidence) and 4 °C ...
The loss of this ice sheet would take between 2,000 and 13,000 years, [21] [22] although several centuries of high greenhouse emissions could shorten this time to 500 years. [23] A sea-level rise of 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) would occur if the ice sheet collapses, leaving ice caps on the mountains, and 4.3 m (14 ft 1 in) if those ice caps also melt. [24]
[205] [206] For instance, the Greenland ice sheet is already melting, but if global warming reaches levels between 1.7 °C and 2.3 °C, its melting will continue until it fully disappears. If the warming is later reduced to 1.5 °C or less, it will still lose a lot more ice than if the warming was never allowed to reach the threshold in the ...
In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, [23] is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km 2 (19,000 sq mi). [24] The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers.