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Figure 25. A, Extent of glaciers in the glacierized regions of the world, from the least glacierized (Irian Jaya, Indonesia, 7.5 km2) to the most glacierized (Canadian Arctic islands; 151,057 km2). The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets were excluded from the original diagram; both ice sheets are added to this modified figure. At the same scale on which the bar graph for Svalbard reaches about 3 cm, a bar graph for the Antarctic ice sheet would have to be 10.45 m long and for the Greenland ice sheet 1.35 m long (see table 1). The area of the Antarctic ice sheet contains 85.32 percent of the Earth’s glacierized area, and the area of the Greenland sheet contains 10.90 percent of Earth’s glacierized area; both ice sheets together contain 96.22 percent of the Earth’s glacierized area (see table 2). Only 3.78 percent of the area of the Earth’s glaciers are non-ice-sheet glaciers. Modified from Zemp and others (2007, p. 132–133, fig. 6B.11a). |