Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 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.
Related Stories
1
2
Earth & Climate News
March 6, 2026
Mar. 5, 2026 Ocean temperatures may be quietly protecting the world from a global drought catastrophe. By analyzing more than a century of climate data, researchers discovered that droughts rarely spread across the planet at the same time, affecting only about ...
Mar. 5, 2026 A sweeping new study of more than 2,000 insect species reveals a troubling reality: many insects may be far less capable of coping with rising temperatures than scientists once hoped. Researchers found that while some species living at higher ...
Mar. 4, 2026 Northern wildfires may be more dangerous for the climate than they appear. Researchers found that fires in boreal forests can burn deep into peat soils, releasing ancient carbon stored for hundreds ...
Mar. 3, 2026 Fusion energy may be one of the most promising clean power sources of the future—but only if scientists can precisely measure the extreme, fast-moving plasmas that make it possible. A new U.S. Department of Energy–sponsored report urges major ...
Mar. 2, 2026 K’gari’s iconic lakes have existed for tens of thousands of years—but they haven’t always been full. New research shows that about 7,500 years ago, during a time of high rainfall, several of ...
Mar. 2, 2026 Even in the ultra-dry Atacama Desert, tiny soil-dwelling nematodes are thriving in surprising diversity. Scientists found that biodiversity increases with moisture and altitude shapes which species survive. In the most extreme zones, many nematodes ...
Feb. 28, 2026 A popular climate theory suggested that melting Antarctic glaciers would release iron into the ocean, sparking algae blooms that pull carbon dioxide from the air. New field data from West Antarctica reveal that meltwater provides far less iron than ...
Feb. 28, 2026 Scientists racing to tackle plastic pollution have created a surprising new contender: a biodegradable packaging film made partly from milk protein. Researchers at Flinders University blended calcium caseinate with starch and natural nanoclay to ...
Feb. 26, 2026 Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier stunned scientists by retreating eight kilometers in just two months, with nearly half of it collapsing in record time. The rapid breakup was driven by a flat, underwater bedrock surface that allowed the glacier to ...
Feb. 25, 2026 A lost cache of 250-million-year-old fossils from Australia has rewritten part of the story of life after Earth’s worst mass extinction. Instead of a single marine amphibian species, researchers ...
Feb. 24, 2026 Scientists have proposed a surprising connection between solar flares and earthquakes. When solar activity disturbs the ionosphere, it may generate electric fields that penetrate fragile fracture zones in Earth’s crust. If a fault is already ...
Feb. 24, 2026 Deep in the Congo Basin, vast peatlands quietly store enormous amounts of Earth’s carbon — but new research suggests this ancient vault may be leaking. Scientists studying Africa’s largest ...
Latest Headlines
updated 12:56 pm ET
Mar. 1, 2026 For the first time ever, scientists have uncovered a vast field of tektites in Brazil — mysterious glassy fragments forged when a powerful ...
Feb. 25, 2026 Earth’s magnetic shield is shifting in dramatic ways. New data from ESA’s Swarm satellites show that the South Atlantic Anomaly — a vast weak ...
Feb. 24, 2026 A new 30-year analysis reveals that melting land ice is now the main force behind rising global sea levels. Researchers discovered that oceans rose about 90 millimeters since 1993, with most of the ...
Feb. 23, 2026 Far beneath the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,000 kilometers off Portugal’s coast, lies a colossal underwater canyon system that dwarfs even the Grand Canyon. Known as the King’s Trough Complex, this ...
Feb. 22, 2026 Deep in the Arctic north, drained peatlands—once massive carbon vaults built over thousands of years—are quietly leaking greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But new field research from northern ...
Feb. 22, 2026 Flea and tick medications trusted by pet owners worldwide may have an unexpected environmental cost. Scientists found that active ingredients from isoxazoline treatments pass into pet feces, exposing ...
Feb. 20, 2026 Scientists at Stanford have unveiled the first-ever global map of rare earthquakes that rumble deep within Earth’s mantle rather than its crust. Long debated and notoriously difficult to confirm, ...
Feb. 18, 2026 Ocean waves are a vast and steady source of renewable energy, but capturing their power efficiently has long frustrated engineers. A researcher at The University of Osaka has now explored a bold new ...
Feb. 18, 2026 Life on Earth may have learned to breathe oxygen long before oxygen filled the skies. MIT researchers traced a key oxygen-processing enzyme back ...
Feb. 18, 2026 As the planet warms, many expected ecosystems to change faster and faster. Instead, a massive global study shows that species turnover has slowed by about one-third since the 1970s. Nature’s ...