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The Antarctic Peninsula, roughly 1,000 kilometres (650 mi) south of South America, is the northernmost portion of the continent of Antarctica. Like the associated Andes, the Antarctic Peninsula is an excellent example of ocean-continent collision resulting in subduction. [1]
Physically, Antarctica is divided in two by the Transantarctic Mountains, close to the neck between the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea. Western Antarctica and Eastern Antarctica correspond roughly to the western and eastern hemispheres relative to the Greenwich meridian. [note 1] West Antarctica is covered by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
A speculative representation of Antarctica labelled as ' Terra Australis Incognita ' on Jan Janssonius's Zeekaart van het Zuidpoolgebied (1657), Het Scheepvaartmuseum The name given to the continent originates from the word antarctic, which comes from Middle French antartique or antarctique (' opposite to the Arctic ') and, in turn, the Latin antarcticus (' opposite to the north ').
The frozen continent of Antarctica was the last continent humanity set foot on. The first documented landings made below the Antarctic Circle took place in 1820, when Admiral Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and the crew of the Vostok and Mirny, as part of the Russian Antarctic Expedition, made land at Peter I Island and Alexander Island.
A map of the Antarctic region, including the Antarctic Convergence and the 60th parallel south The Antarctic Plate. The Antarctic (/ æ n ˈ t ɑːr t ɪ k,-k t ɪ k /, US also / æ n t ˈ ɑːr t ɪ k,-k t ɪ k /; commonly / æ ˈ n ɑːr t ɪ k /) [Note 1] is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole.
The Antarctic continental shelf is a submerged piece of the Antarctic continent that underlies a portion of the Southern Ocean — the ocean which surrounds Antarctica. The shelf is generally narrow and unusually deep, its edge lying at depths averaging 500 meters (the global mean is around 100 meters), with troughs extending as far as 2000 ...
Antarctica was also part of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland, which gradually broke up by continental drift starting 110 million years ago. The separation of South America from Antarctica 30–35 million years ago allowed the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to form, which isolated Antarctica climatically and caused it to become much colder.
[74] [75] [76] According to one study, if the Paris Agreement is followed and global warming is limited to 2 °C (3.6 °F), the loss of ice in Antarctica will continue at the 2020 rate for the rest of the 21st century, but if a trajectory leading to 3 °C (5.4 °F) is followed, Antarctica ice loss will accelerate after 2060 and start adding 0.5 ...