According to the British Antarctic Survey:
- The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million sq km and contains 30 million cu km of ice. Around 90 per cent of the fresh water on the Earth's surface is held in the ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water in the world's oceans. In East Antarctica the ice sheet rests on a major land mass, but in West Antarctica the bed is in places more than 2500 m below sea level. It would be seabed if the ice sheet were not there.
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