Everything about The Antarctic Ice Sheet totally explained
The
Antarctic ice sheet is one of the two
polar ice caps of the
Earth. It covers about 98% of the
Antarctic continent and 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 of ice. That is, approximately 61 percent of all
fresh water on the Earth is held in the Antarctic ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water in the world's oceans. In
East Antarctica, the ice sheet rests on a major land mass, but in
West Antarctica the bed can extend to more than 2,500 m below sea level. The land would be seabed if the ice sheet were not there.
Ice enters the sheet through precipitation, and typically leaves the sheet by calving of coastal
icebergs that melt once in the ocean. . The general trend shows that a warming climate in the southern hemisphere would transport more moisture to Antarctica, causing the interior ice sheets to grow, while calving events along the coast will increase, causing these areas to shrink. 2007 showed the largest postive anomoly of sea ice in the southern hemisphere since records have been kept starting in 1979 and 2008 is currently on pace to surpass last years record.
It is a common misconception that the melting of floating ice shelves won't raise sea levels. Because ice shelves are made of fresh water, that'll be less dense, i.e, have greater volume than sea water even when melted. The volume of the (melted) water contained in the ice shelf is about 3% greater than the volume of the sea water needed to displace the ice shelf. So as it melts that additional 3% will increase sea level slightly.
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