Categories: Astronomy

What is the Biggest Island on Earth?

The largest island on Earth is Greenland, with a total land area of 2.2 million km2.

This is a bit of a complicated question because it’s hard to define the difference between an island and a continent. Both Antarctica and Australia are larger than Greenland, but they’re continents, so they’re out.

As you probably know, Greenland sits up near the Earth’s north pole, in between North America and Europe. More than 80% of the island is covered by glaciers, some of which can be more than a kilometer thick. With such an extreme environment, Greenland is sparsely populated; roughly 60,000 people live on the island, and most of those live in the capital city of Nuuk, on the southern island.

If you’re interested, the second largest island on Earth is New Guinea, with 785,000 square kilometers. And the third largest island is Borneo, with 748,000 km.

We have written many articles about the Earth for Universe Today. Here’s an article about how scientists measure melting ice in Greenland, and how snow melt is on the rise in Greenland.

Want more resources on the Earth? Here’s a link to NASA’s Human Spaceflight page, and here’s NASA’s Visible Earth.

We have also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about Earth, as part of our tour through the Solar System – Episode 51: Earth.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay. Here's a link to my Mastodon account.

Recent Posts

Hubble and Webb are the Dream Team. Don't Break Them Up

Many people think of the James Webb Space Telescope as a sort of Hubble 2.…

5 hours ago

Scientists Have Figured out why Martian Soil is so Crusty

On November 26th, 2018, NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight)…

13 hours ago

Another Way to Extract Energy From Black Holes?

Black holes are incredible powerhouses, but they might generate even more energy thanks to an…

18 hours ago

Plastic Waste on our Beaches Now Visible from Space, Says New Study

According to the United Nations, the world produces about 430 million metric tons (267 U.S.…

1 day ago

Future Space Telescopes Could be Made From Thin Membranes, Unrolled in Space to Enormous Size

As we saw with JWST, it's difficult and expensive to launch large telescope apertures, relying…

2 days ago

Voyager 1 is Forced to Rely on its Low Power Radio

Voyager 1 was launched waaaaaay back in 1977. I would have been 4 years old…

2 days ago