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Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km 2 (5,500,000 sq mi). Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi).
The Marie Byrd Land makes up a large portion of West Antarctica, consisting of the Area below the Antarctic Peninsula. The Marie Byrd land is a large formation of volcanic rock, characterized by 18 exposed and subglacial volcanoes. 16 of the 18 volcanoes are entirely covered by the antarctic ice sheet. [ 10 ]
An image of Antarctica differentiating its landmass (dark grey) from its ice shelves (minimum extent, light grey, and maximum extent, white) Edge of Ekstrom Ice Shelf. Ice shelves are attached to a large portion of the Antarctic coastline. Their total area is 1,541,700 km 2. [1]
Dymaxion map of the world with the 30 largest countries and territories by area. This is a list of the world's countries and their dependencies, ranked by total area, including land and water. This list includes entries that are not limited to those in the ISO 3166-1 standard, which covers sovereign states and dependent territories.
This list includes all islands in the world larger than 1,000 km 2 (390 sq mi). For size and location reference, the four continental landmasses are also shown. Continental landmasses Continental landmasses are not usually classified as islands despite being completely surrounded by water. [Note 1] However, because the definition of continent varies between geographers, the Americas are ...
The region covers some 20 percent of the Southern Hemisphere, of which 5.5 percent (14 million km 2) is the surface area of the Antarctica continent itself. All of the land and ice shelves south of 60°S latitude are administered under the Antarctic Treaty System .
The melting of Antarctica is accelerating at an alarming rate, with about 3 trillion tons of ice disappearing since 1992, an international team of ice experts said in a new study.
East Antarctica is the larger and has a higher average elevation. Separating the two subcontinents is a lower elevation topographic region occupied by the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea. This region is referred to as the Ross Embayment. The embayment comprises an area of approximately 1,137,000 square kilometres (439,000 sq mi).