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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.
For much of the past 120,000 years, the climate of Greenland has been colder than in the last few millennia of recorded history (upper half), allowing the ice sheet to become considerably larger than it is now (lower half). [32] The base of the ice sheet may be warm enough due to geothermal activity to have liquid water beneath it. [33]
Paleoclimate research and improved modelling show that the West Antarctic ice sheet is very likely to disappear even if the warming does not progress any further, and only reducing the warming to 2 °C (3.6 °F) below the temperature of 2020 may save it. It is believed that the loss of the ice sheet would take between 2,000 and 13,000 years ...
An iceberg is a piece of fresh water ice more than 15 meters (16 yards) long [1] that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Smaller chunks of floating glacially derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits".
A glacier (US: / ˈ ɡ l eɪ ʃ ər / GLAY-shər) or (UK: / ˈ ɡ l æ s i ə /) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries.
A map of West Antarctica. The total volume of the entire Antarctic ice sheet is estimated at 26.92 million km 3 (6.46 million cu mi), [2] while the WAIS contains about 2.1 million km 3 (530,000 cu mi) in ice that is above the sea level, and ~1 million km 3 (240,000 cu mi) in ice that is below it. [20]
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A glacier (US: / ˈ ɡ l eɪ ʃ ər /; UK: / ˈ ɡ l æ s i ər, ˈ ɡ l eɪ s i ər /) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries.