True size · Antarctica
How big is Antarctica?
Antarctica measures 12,256,545 km² on this map. It is larger than China by 2,885,181 km², and 270,673 km² short of China and India together (12,527,218 km²).
That is 5.7 Greenlands, and about 73 per cent of Russia. Mercator cannot show the pole, so the continent is cropped into a white strip along the bottom of the classroom map. The strip is a continent.
It holds roughly 70 per cent of the planet’s fresh water, frozen.
Antarctica moved up beside China on Equal Earth. The ice is the larger shape. India would nearly use up what Antarctica still has spare. Open this scene on the full map.
Areas are the shapes drawn on Map Real Size, measured on the sphere. Official land-area tables differ where they include inland water, a different coastline, or a disputed border. How big is Antarctica really?.