Mondo Knows Facts

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest single mass of ice

It holds nearly 70 percent of all fresh water on the planet

Covering an area of roughly 14 million square kilometres, the Antarctic Ice Sheet contains about 27 million cubic kilometres of ice. In some regions, the ice sheet reaches a thickness of over 4.7 kilometres. If the entire ice sheet were to melt, global sea levels would rise by about 58 metres.

Antarctic shelf ice hg
Hannes Grobe , Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany ยท CC BY-SA 2.5 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

NASA

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Tags: antarctica, ice sheet, glacier

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest single mass of ice: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
It holds nearly 70 percent of all fresh water on the planet. The figure is taken from NASA, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a records & extremes fact?
Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.