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ShareAn Ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 square kilometers (19,305 square miles).
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The only current ice sheets are Antarctic and Greenland; during the last ice age at Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) the Laurentide ice sheet covered much of Canada and North America, the Weichselian ice sheet covered northern Europe and the Patagonian Ice Sheet covered southern South America.
The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth.
The Greenland ice sheet occupies about 82% of the surface of Greenland, and if melted would cause sea levels to rise by 7.2 metres.
Estimated changes in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet suggest it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres (57.3 cubic miles) per year. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or glaciers.
Masses of ice covering less than 50,000 square kilometers are termed an ice cap.
An ice cap will typically feed a series of glaciers around its periphery.
For more information about the topic Ice sheet, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
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
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
Greenland ice sheet — 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 ... > 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
Iceberg — An iceberg is a large piece of ice that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. Since the density of ... > read more
Ice age — An ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth's climate, resulting in an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ... > read more
Geologic temperature record — This article is devoted to temperature changes in Earth's environment as determined from geologic evidence on multi-million to billion (109) year ... > read more
Temperature record — The temperature record shows the fluctuations of the temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans through various spans of time. The most detailed ... > read more
Glacier — A glacier is a large, long-lasting river of ice that is formed on land and moves in response to gravity. A glacier is formed by multi-year ice ... > read more
Winter storm — A winter storm is a type of precipitation in which the dominant varieties of precipitation are forms that only occur at cold temperatures, such as ... > read moreRecommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
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