Is the East or West Antarctic ice sheet bigger?
The EAIS holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 53.3 m and is considerably larger in area and mass than the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).
How thick is the Antarctic Ice Sheet km?
2.16 km
The mean thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet is 2.16 km. The maximum known thickness of the ice sheet is 4,776 m in Terre Adélie. Without the its ice, Antarctica may be the lowest lying continent. The greatest known depression of bedrock – the Byrd Subglacial Basin – lies at 2,538 m below sea level.
How many cubic miles of ice lost Antarctica?
24 cubic miles
The continent of Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice per year since 2002.
How thick is the ice on average in East Antarctica?
2226m
The main differences are: The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) has about 9 times the volume of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The EAIS has an average thickness of 2226m compared with the WAIS maximum of 1306m.
How thick is the ice at the South Pole?
The dome of the polar ice cap is 4800 metres thick at its deepest point and the South Pole stands on top of 2.8 kilometres of ice. The average height of Antarctica is much higher than any other continent. Its average elevation is 2160 metres – considerably more than Asia, the next highest at about 1000 metres.
Is the Antarctic Ice Sheet growing or shrinking?
According to climate models, rising global temperatures should cause sea ice in both regions to shrink. But observations show that ice extent in the Arctic has shrunk faster than models predicted, and in the Antarctic it has been growing slightly.
Will we have another ice age?
Researchers used data on Earth’s orbit to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one and from this have predicted that the next ice age would usually begin within 1,500 years.