SSC MTS EXAM

Detailed explanation-1: -Most of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is grounded below sea level, in places over 1.5 miles below sea level. These two ice sheets cover all but 2.4 percent of Antarctica’s 14 million square kilometers. At its thickest point the ice sheet is 4, 776 meters deep.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest block of ice on Earth. It covers more than 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles) and contains about 30 million cubic kilometers (7.2 million cubic miles) of water.

Detailed explanation-3: -Two major ice sheets exist today, in Greenland and Antarctica. Ice sheets are large masses of glacial ice, also known as continental glaciers, that cover at least 20, 000 square miles of land.

Detailed explanation-4: -The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is divided from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet by the large Transantarctic Mountains. The BEDMAP 2 dataset (Fretwell et al. 2013) shows how ice thickness across the Antarctic continent is variable, with thin ice over the mountains and thick ice over East Antarctica.