Ice sheets are huge masses of ice. According to the IPCC, ice sheet is a mass of land ice of continental size that is sufficiently thick to cover most of the underlying bed.
At present, there are only two ice sheets in the world, Greenland and Antarctica. But during glaciation cicles, an ice sheet formed at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere.
It is estimated that if all of Greenland’s ice melted, sea level would rise by about 7 meters. For Antarctica, the increase would be around 60 meters.
The image above offers one easy way to see how much ice is stored at Greenland and Antarctica. It compares the thickness of the ice sheets with the altitude of different mountains in the world.
Mount Olympus is about the size of Greenland’s thickest place. One of the most famous mountains of the Alps, Matterhorn stands shoulder to shoulder with the thickest point of Antarctica ice sheet.