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Greenland Ice Sheet

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Synonyms

Greenland ice cap

Introduction

The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 80% of the Greenland land surface area of 2.2 million km2. The volume of ice in the ice sheet is 2.8 million km3. The geographical position of the ice sheet ranges from 59° to 83° North and from 73° to 110° West. Each year, snow accumulation provides the equivalent of 680 km3 of ice and if the ice sheet was in a steady state it would lose the same amount by surface meltwater runoff and iceberg discharge.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is thought to have formed approximately 3 million years ago when glaciations in the northern hemisphere became extensive. The cause of Northern hemisphere glaciations is not fully established. It is possible that tectonic processes such as the uplift of Tibet and closure of the Panama sea way caused global cooling (e.g., Haug and Tiedemann, 1998), but Earth system modeling shows that a decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide could have triggered the most recent era of glaciations in Greenland...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, CB2 1ER, Cambridge, UK

    Poul Christoffersen

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  1. Poul Christoffersen
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Correspondence to Poul Christoffersen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

    Vijay P. Singh

  2. New Delhi, India

    Pratap Singh

  3. University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, USA

    Umesh K. Haritashya

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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Christoffersen, P. (2011). Greenland Ice Sheet. In: Singh, V.P., Singh, P., Haritashya, U.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2642-2_227

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