Green land ice cape

The Greenland Ice Sheet is also sometimes referred to under the term inland ice, or its Danish equivalent, indlandsis. It is also sometimes referred to as an ice cap. Ice sheet, however, is considered the more correct term as ice cap generally refers to less extensive ice masses.The ice in the current ice sheet is as old as years. However, it is generally thought that the Greenland Ice Sheet formed in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene by coalescence of ice caps and glaciers. It did not develop at all until the late Pliocene, but apparently developed very rapidly with the first continental glaciation.

The massive weight of the ice has depressed the central area of Greenland; the bedrock surface is near sea level over most of the interior of Greenland, but mountains occur around the periphery, confining the sheet along its margins. If the ice were to disappear, Greenland would most probably appear as an archipelago, at least until isostasy would lift the land surface above sea level once again. The ice surface reaches its greatest altitude on two north south elongated domes, or ridges. The southern dome reaches almost metres at latitudes the northern dome reaches about metres at about latitude .

The crests of both domes are displaced east of the centre line of Greenland. The unconfined ice sheet does not reach the sea along a broad front anywhere in Greenland, so that no large ice shelves occur. The ice margin just reaches the sea, however, in a region of irregular topography in the area of Melville Bay southeast of Thule. Large outlet glaciers, which are restricted tongues of the ice sheet, move through bordering valleys around the periphery of Greenland to calve off into the ocean, producing the numerous icebergs that sometimes occur in North Atlantic shipping lanes.

The best known of these outlet glaciers is Jakobshavn Isbræ Kalaallisut Sermeq Kujalleq, which, at its terminus, flows at speeds of metres per day.On the ice sheet, temperatures are generally substantially lower than elsewhere in Greenland. The lowest mean annual temperatures, about occur on the north central part of the north dome, and temperatures at the crest of the south dome are about .During winter, the ice sheet takes on a strikingly clear blue green color. During summer, the top layer of ice melts leaving pockets of air in the ice that makes it look white.