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Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km 2 (5,500,000 sq mi). Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi).
The Antarctic (/ ænˈtɑːrtɪk / or / ænˈtɑːrktɪk /, American English also / æntˈɑːrtɪk / or / æntˈɑːrktɪk /; commonly / æˈnɑːrtɪk /) [Note 1] is a polar region around Earth 's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and other ...
The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn in the 15th and ...
The geography of Antarctica is dominated by its south polar location and, thus, by ice. The Antarctic continent, located in the Earth 's southern hemisphere, is centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle. It is washed by the Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean or, depending on definition, the southern ...
The geology of Antarctica covers the geological development of the continent through the Archean, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic eons. The geological study of Antarctica has been greatly hindered by the fact that nearly all of the continent is continuously covered with a thick layer of ice. However, techniques such as remote sensing have begun to ...
Tourism in Antarctica. Tourism started in Antarctica by the sea in the 1960s. Air overflights started in the 1970s with sightseeing flights by airliners from Australia and New Zealand, and were resumed in the 1990s. The (summer) tour season lasts from November to March. Most of the estimated 14,762 visitors to Antarctica from 1999–2000 were ...
Antarctic Peninsula. Coordinates: 69°30′S 65°00′W. The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martín in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica. Antarctic Peninsula map.
Climate of Antarctica. The climate of Antarctica is the coldest on Earth. The continent is also extremely dry (it is a desert [1]), averaging 166 mm (6.5 in) of precipitation per year. Snow rarely melts on most parts of the continent, and, after being compressed, becomes the glacier ice that makes up the ice sheet.