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Antarctica is the coldest, driest continent on Earth, and has the highest average elevation. [19] Antarctica's dryness means the air contains little water vapor and conducts heat poorly. [18] The Southern Ocean surrounding the continent is far more effective at absorbing heat than any other ocean. [20]
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) lies between 45° west and 168° east longitudinally. It was first formed around 34 million years ago, [3] and it is the largest ice sheet on the entire planet, with far greater volume than the Greenland ice sheet or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), from which it is separated by the Transantarctic Mountains.
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]
Antarctica’s vast expanse of sea ice regulates Earth’s temperature, as the white surface reflects the Sun’s heat back into the atmosphere and cools the water beneath it. Without it, the ...
Antarctica is actually gaining ice mass thanks to snow and instead of driving sea level rise, it may actually be slowing it down. Antarctica is actually gaining ice mass thanks to snow and instead ...
Consequently, the near-surface winds steered around weather systems are thought to explain large parts of the inhomogeneous Antarctica sea-ice trends. The 2021 IPCC AR6 report confirms the observed increasing trend in the mean Antarctic sea ice area over the period from 1979 to 2014 but assesses that there was a decline after 2014, with the ...
A project to map Antarctic sea ice over the last four years from below using an. Antarctic sea ice is increasing - that's old news - but now it's also thicker than scientists thought, and that's ...
Nearly all of Antarctica is covered by a sheet of ice that is, on average, at least 1,500 m (5,000 ft) thick. Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice and more than 70% of its fresh water. If all the land-ice covering Antarctica were to melt — around 30 × 10 ^ 6 km 3 (7.2 × 10 ^ 6 cu mi) of ice — the seas would rise by over 60 m (200 ft ...