Mondo Knows Facts
Greenland is the largest island in the world
Australia counts as a continent rather than an island
Greenland covers about 2.17 million square kilometres, roughly three times the size of Texas. It sits outside the continent it belongs to politically, and its ice sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by several metres if it melted entirely. Maps make it look larger still because of projection distortion.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Greenland is the largest non-continental island in the worldCovering over two million square kilometres, roughly eighty per cent of Greenland is blanketed by a permanent ice sheet.The Lambert Glacier in Antarctica is the world's largest glacierThis massive ice stream measures over 400 kilometres longSweden has more islands than any other countryAround 268,000 islands sit within its borders, most of them tinySaturn rings consist almost entirely of water iceBillions of icy fragments range from microscopic specks to house-sized bouldersAntarctica is technically the largest desert on EarthAntarctica receives an average of less than 200 millimetres of precipitation each year along its coast and far less inland.Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on EarthRising 3,794 metres on Ross Island in Antarctica, Mount Erebus has been continuously active for decades.
Tags: greenland, islands, ice
Greenland is the largest island in the world: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Australia counts as a continent rather than an island. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 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.