what is the size of the polar ice caps
Polar ice cap There are no requirements with respect to size or composition for a body of ice to be termed a polar ice cap, nor any geological requirement for it to be over land; only that it must be a body of solid phase matter in the polar region. This causes the term "polar ice cap" to be something of a misnomer, as the term ice cap itself is applied more narrowly to bodies that are over land, and cover less than 50,000 km²: larger bodies are referred to as ice sheets.
Martian polar ice caps The caps at both poles consist primarily of water ice. Frozen carbon dioxide accumulates as a comparatively thin layer about one metre thick on the north cap in the northern winter, while the south cap has a permanent dry ice cover about 8 m thick.[4] The northern polar cap has a diameter of about 1000 km during the northern Mars summer,[5] and contains about 1.6 million cubic km of ice, which if spread evenly on the cap would be 2 km thick.[6] (This compares to a volume of 2.85 million cubic km (km3) for the Greenland ice sheet.) The southern polar cap has a diameter of 350 km and a thickness of 3 km.[7] The total volume of ice in the south polar cap plus the adjacent layered deposits has also been estimated at 1.6 million cubic km.[8] Both polar caps show spiral troughs, which recent analysis of SHARAD ice penetrating radar has shown are a result of roughly perpendicular katabatic winds that spiral due to the Coriolis Effect.[9][10]
Martian polar ice caps Research, published in April 2011, described a large deposit of frozen carbon dioxide near the south pole. Most of this deposit probably enters Mars' atmosphere when the planet's tilt increases. When this occurs, the atmosphere thickens, winds get stronger, and larger areas on the surface can support liquid water. [32] Analysis of data showed that if these deposits were all changed into gas, the atmospheric pressure on Mars would double.[33] There are three layers of these deposits; each is capped with a 30-meter layer of water ice that prevents the CO2 from sublimating into the atmosphere. In sublimation a solid material goes directly into a gas phase. These three layers are linked to periods when the atmosphere collapsed when the climate changed.[34]
Backshore Sediments in this area are well-sorted and well-rounded. Its grain sizes are mainly coarse sand and medium sand, which are larger than that in littoral barrier dune.The sedimentary structures include parallel bedding and low-angle cross-bedding.