Wikiplacemarks.com  
 



Find us on Google+

Greenland ice sheet

View on map:71.187754°N 41.660156°W

Description


Greenland ice sheet

The Greenland ice sheet (Greenlandic: Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometres (660,235 sq mi), 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 (1,500 mi) long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. The mean altitude of the ice is 2,135 metres (7,005 ft). The thickness is generally more than 2 km (1.24 mi) and over 3 km (1.86 mi) at its thickest point. It is not the only ice mass of Greenland – isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover between 76,000 and 100,000 square kilometres (29,344 and 38,610 sq mi) around the periphery. Some scientists predict that climate change may be near a "tipping point" where the entire ice sheet will melt in about 2000 years.[2] If the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (683,751 cu mi) of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (23.6 ft).[3]

References

All text is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Average user rating: Not rated

Click on a star to rate
 

Do you have a form that you would like to turn into an application?

Please share your ideas with us.

Contact us...