Greenland Ice Sheet

The Greenland ice sheet is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometres, roughly near 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is sometimes referred to as an ice cap, or under the term inland ice, or its Danish equivalent, indlandsis. An acronym, GIS, is frequently used in the scientific literature.

It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic ice sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,900 kilometres long in a north–south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. The average thickness is about 1.5 km and over 3 km at its thickest point. In addition to the large ice sheet, smaller ice caps as well as glaciers, cover between 76,000 and 100,000 square kilometres around the periphery.