An island is a landmass completely surrounded by water. Of course, some of the world’s continents are islands. But if we exclude Australia and the other continents, then Greenland is by far the largest island on earth.
Greenland has an area of about 840,000 square miles, more than three times the size of Texas! New Guinea, the world’s second largest island, has an area of less than 306,000 square miles. But only about 130,000 square miles of Greenland are free from a year-round covering of ice, ice that in some places may be more than 11,000 feet thick!
Some scientists believe that Greenland is not a single island, but several smaller islands covered by the same sheet of ice. If this is true, they estimate that the area of Greenland is “only” 650,000 square miles.
