Where are Earth’s largest ice sheets located?

Earth’s two largest present-day ice sheets are located in Antarctica and Greenland.1

• Antarctic Ice Sheet: This is the world’s largest ice sheet, covering approximately 98 percent of the Antarctic continent. It holds about 90 percent of the world’s glacier ice and 80 percent of its fresh water.1
• Greenland Ice Sheet: This is the second-largest ice mass in the world and the largest in the Northern Hemisphere, covering about 80 percent of Greenland.12

Together, these two ice masses contain approximately 99 percent of the world’s glacier ice. While these are the only two remaining ice sheets on Earth today, geological records indicate that much larger ice sheets, such as the Laurentide Ice Sheet and the Scandinavian Ice Sheet, covered significant portions of North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene Epoch.1