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Nearly all of Antarctica is covered by a sheet of ice that is, on average, at least 1,500 m (5,000 ft) thick. Antarctica contains 90% of the world's ice and more than 70% of its fresh water. If all the land-ice covering Antarctica were to melt — around 30 × 10 ^ 6 km 3 (7.2 × 10 ^ 6 cu mi) of ice — the seas would rise by over 60 m (200 ft ...
The dry wind evaporates the snow rapidly and little melts into the soil. During the summer, this process can take only hours. Another important factor is a lack of precipitation. Precipitation averages around 100 millimetres (4 in) per year over a century of records, almost [3] [4] exclusively in the form of snow. This contributes to the low ...
The weather in Antarctica can be highly variable, and weather conditions will oftentimes change dramatically in a short period of time. Weather conditions on the continent are classified in a number of ways, and restrictions placed upon workers and other staffs vary both by stations and by nations.
Along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula south of 63° S, precipitation ranges from 10 to 15 cm (3.9 to 5.9 in). In comparison, the subantarctic islands have precipitation of 100–200 cm (39–79 in) per year and the dry interior of Antarctica is a virtual desert with only 10 cm (3.9 in) precipitation per year. [20]
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, and driest of Earth's continents. [1] Near the coast, the temperature can exceed 10 °C in summer and fall to below −40 °C in winter. Over the elevated inland, it can rise to about −30 °C in summer but fall below −80 °C in winter.
Once the preserve of explorers and sea dogs, the Drake is today a daunting challenge for an ever-increasing number of travelers to Antarctica — and not just because it takes up to 48 hours to ...
It’s been a strange stretch for the icy desert at the bottom of the world. In mid-March, temperatures in parts of East Antarctica soared 70 degrees Fahrenheit
Antarctica has the lowest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded: −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F) at Vostok Station in 1983. [4] It is also extremely dry (technically a desert , or so called polar desert ), averaging 166 millimetres (6.5 in) of precipitation per year, as weather fronts rarely penetrate far into the continent.