General Knowledge - World Geography - Discussion

The largest glacial bodies, ice sheets or continental glaciers, cover more than 50,000 km² (20,000 mile²). Several kilometers deep, they obscure the underlying topography. Only nunataks protrude from the surface. The only extant ice sheets are the two that cover most of Antarctica and Greenland. These regions contain vast quantities of fresh water. The volume of ice is so large that if the Greenland ice sheet melted, it would cause sea levels to rise six meters (20 ft) all around the world. If the Antarctic ice sheet melted, sea levels would rise up to 65 meters (210 ft).