Antarctica has lost nearly 3 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992

Though the Antarctic Peninsula is plastered in snow and ice, the region is losing ice at an increasing rate. Pippa Whitehouse, University of Durham

It can be easy to overlook the monstrous scale of the Antarctic ice sheet. Ice, thick enough in many places to bury mountains, covers a continent roughly the size of the US and Mexico combined.

If it were all to melt, as it has in the past, global sea levels would rise by 58 metres.