In 1984, there were 1.86 million square kilometers of old ice spread across the Arctic at its yearly minimum extent. In September 2016, there were only 110,000 square kilometers of old ice left.
A slab of ice larger than the continental United States smothers much of East Antarctica. Draining from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is a river of ice nearly 800 kilometers long. This stream, the Recovery Ice Stream, slides roughly 35 billion tons of ice into the ocean each year.