Largest contiguous glacier

A glacier is defined as "any mass of snow and ice which deforms under its own weight and flows". An "ice sheet" is a second-order classification and simply describes the largest type of glacier, which is greater than 50,000 square kilometres (19,300 square miles). Given that definition, the largest contiguous glacier is the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which submerges most of the Antarctic continent and covers an area of 13,924,000 square kilometres (5,376,100 square miles), including its floating sections (known as ice shelves). Its total volume is 26,920,000 cubic kilometres (6,458,450 cubic miles), which is enough ice to raise global sea level by 57.9 metres (190 feet).

Most of the ice is in East Antarctica (52.2 m/171 ft of sea level equivalent), with lower volumes in West Antarctica (5.3 m/17 ft) and the Antarctic Peninsula (0.27 m/10.6 in).

For comparison, the next largest ice mass is the Greenland Ice Sheet, in the northern hemisphere, which has an area of 1,736,000 km2 (670,270 sq mi), a volume of 2,990,000 km3 (717,340 cu mi), and holds a sea level equivalent of 7.4 m (24 ft).

The world’s largest individual glacier is the Seller Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula which was measured at 7,018 km^{2 (2,710 sq mi)} in 2002. This category of glaciers is distinct from glacier complexes, where a number of glaciers are joined together and which typically cover much larger areas, such as the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.