Ice caps are miniature ice sheets. Like icefields, ice caps cover less than 50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles). Unlike icefields, ice caps completely blanket the underlying land features. They are domes that spread in all directions.

What is the role of ice caps?

The cryosphere contains the frozen parts of the planet. It includes snow and ice on land, ice caps, glaciers, permafrost, and sea ice. This sphere helps maintain Earth's climate by reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space.

What are the two ice caps?

Today, there are only two ice sheets in the world: the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. During the last glacial period, however, much of the Earth was covered by ice sheets.