The Greenland Ice Sheet is a vast body of ice covering roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland.

It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres at a latitude of 77° N, near its northern margin.

The ice sheet, consisting of layers of compressed snow from more than a hundred thousand years, contains in its ice today's most valuable record of past climates.

In the past decades, scientists have drilled ice cores up to three kilometres deep.

With the ice cores, scientist have obtained information on (proxies for) temperature, ocean volume, precipitation, chemistry and gas composition of the lower atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, solar variability, sea-surface productivity, desert extent and forest fires.

This variety of climatic proxies is greater than in any other natural recorder of climate, such as tree rings or sediment layers.

The Greenland Ice Sheet has experienced record melting in recent years and is likely to contribute substantially to sea level rise as well as to possible changes in ocean circulation in the future..

For more information about the topic Greenland ice sheet, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Ice sheet — An Ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 square kilometers (19,305 square miles). The only ...  > read more

Ice shelf — An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface, ...  > read more

Antarctic ice sheet — The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million square km and contains 30 million cubic km ...  > read more

Larsen Ice Shelf — The Larsen Ice Shelf is a long, fringing ice shelf in the northwest part of the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of Antarctic Peninsula ...  > read more

Related Stories

Intensified Ice Sheet Movements Do Not Affect Rising Sea Levels (July 11, 2008) — Meltwater is rapidly increasing the tempo of glacial movements on the rim of the Greenland ice sheet. Over the long term, however, this process is interrupted as meltwater drains away via broad ...  > read more

Why Is Antarctica So Cold? Scientists Pursue History Of Antarctic Ice Sheet (February 18, 1998) — Departing Punta Arenas, Chile, in mid-February, 26 scientists representing 10 countries will sail aboard the ocean drilling ship JOIDES Resolution to collect core samples from the continental rise ...  > read more

Why Is Greenland Covered In Ice? Changes In Carbon Dioxide Levels Explain Transition (August 28, 2008) — A fall in levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, close to that of pre-industrial times, explains the transition from a mostly ice-free Greenland of three million years ago to the ice-covered region we ...  > read more

Tidal Motion Influences Antarctic Ice Sheet (December 24, 2006) — New research into the way the Antarctic ice sheet adds ice to the ocean reveals that tidal motion influences the flow of the one of the biggest ice streams draining the West Antarctic Ice ...  > read more

Record Warm Summers Cause Extreme Ice Melt In Greenland (January 16, 2008) — Recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years. New research provides further evidence of a key impact of global warming and helps scientists place recent ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Edible Antifreeze Saves Ice Cream