The total area of Greenland is 2.1 million km², but where other countries have usable land and maybe some lakes, Greenland has 1.7 million km² of ice. There’s some land under there, but much less than you might think:
Topographic map of Greenland (Wikipedia)
The US has 9.1 million km² of actual land, so if we’re counting the ice, a quarter is about right.
That part in the middle is land that has a miles-thick pile of ice on top of it. There’s probably not any significant amount of liquid water on that land under the ice right now, and (in the long term) there probably still wouldn’t be any liquid water on it because isostatic rebound would cause the land to lift if the ice were removed. I haven’t found any sources that definitively claim whether the magnitude of the rebound would be enough to get all of it above sea level, but my guess is that it would.
The total area of Greenland is 2.1 million km², but where other countries have usable land and maybe some lakes, Greenland has 1.7 million km² of ice. There’s some land under there, but much less than you might think:
Topographic map of Greenland (Wikipedia)
The US has 9.1 million km² of actual land, so if we’re counting the ice, a quarter is about right.
oh wow, there’s a whole pond in the middle ! wonder if it’s salty
Well yes, but actually no.
That part in the middle is land that has a miles-thick pile of ice on top of it. There’s probably not any significant amount of liquid water on that land under the ice right now, and (in the long term) there probably still wouldn’t be any liquid water on it because isostatic rebound would cause the land to lift if the ice were removed. I haven’t found any sources that definitively claim whether the magnitude of the rebound would be enough to get all of it above sea level, but my guess is that it would.
That’s mad, thanks for the link. Simply fascinating