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Melting Antarctic ice

If all the ice in Antarctica melted, would global sea levels rise by 70 metres?

One More or Less listener has heard that if all the ice in Antarctica melted, global sea levels would rise by 70 metres. But it would take 361 billion tonnes of ice to raise the world's sea levels by just 1 millimetre.

So how much ice is in Antarctica? And in the coming years, what impact might temperature changes have on whether it remains frozen?

(Gentoo penguins on top of an iceberg at King George Island, Antarctica 2020. Credit: Alessandro Dahan/Getty Images)

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9 minutes

Last on

Mon 10 Aug 202015:50GMT
BBC World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only

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