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Surface temperature of Antarctica in winter and summer from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. 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.
Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi). Antarctica is, on average, the coldest, driest, and windiest of the continents, and it has the highest average elevation. It is mainly a polar desert, with annual precipitation of over 200 mm (8 in) along the coast and far less inland.
Antarctic tundra occurs on Antarctica and on several Antarctic and subantarctic islands, including South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and the Kerguelen Islands. Most of Antarctica is too cold and dry to support vegetation, and most of the continent is covered by ice fields or cold deserts.
Antarctica is the largest ice desert in the world. Some 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet , the world's largest ice sheet and also its largest reservoir of fresh water . Averaging at least 1.6 km thick, the ice is so massive that it has depressed the continental bedrock in some areas more than 2.5 km below sea level ...
Rank Name Type Image Area (km 2) Area (sq mi) Location [note 1] Nation(s) 1: Antarctic Desert: Polar ice and tundra: 14,200,000 [1]: 5,482,651: Antarctica: N/A 2: Arctic Desert: Polar ice and tundra
Most of the interior of Antarctica is polar desert, despite the thick ice cover. Conversely, the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, although they have had no ice for thousands of years due to katabatic wind but contain ephemeral streams and hypersaline lakes characteristic of extreme non-polar deserts, are not necessarily polar desert ...
Antarctica is the world's largest cold desert (composed of about 98% thick continental ice sheet and 2% barren rock). Some of the barren rock is to be found in the so-called Dry Valleys of Antarctica that almost never get snow, which can have ice-encrusted saline lakes that suggest evaporation far greater than the rare snowfall due to the ...
Map of Antarctica with Eastern Antarctica seen to the right. Image of a variety of ice types off the coast of East Antarctica. East Antarctica, also called Greater Antarctica, constitutes the majority (two-thirds) of the Antarctic continent, lying primarily in the Eastern Hemisphere south of the Indian Ocean, and separated from West Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains.