Plateau - Major Plateaus of The World

Major Plateaus of The World

The largest and highest plateau in the world is the Tibetan Plateau, called the "roof of the world", which is still being formed by the collisions of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates. In all, the Tibetan plateau covers an area of some 2.5 million square kilometres, approximately 5000 m above sea level. The height of this plateau is such that it is enough to reverse the Hadley cell convection cycles and to drive the monsoons of India towards the south.

The second-largest current plateau in the world is the Antarctic Plateau, which covers most of the central part of Antarctica. In that region of Antarctica, there are no known mountains, but rather 3000 meters or more of ice - which very slowly spreads toward the coastline via enormous glaciers. This ice cap is so massive that echolocation sound measurements of the thickness of the ice have shown that large parts of the "dry land" surface of Antarctica have been pressed below sea level. Thus, if the icecap were somehow removed, large areas of Antarctica would be flooded by the oceans. On the other hand - more realistically - were the icecap to gradually melt away, the surface of the land beneath it would gradually rebound away from the center of the Earth, and that land would ultimately rise above sea level.

The third-largest plateau in the world is probably the one in South America that lies in the middle of the Andes Mountains. This Altiplano covers most of Bolivia, central Peru, northern Chile and northern Argentina.