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The Geographic South Pole is marked by the stake on the right NASA image showing Antarctica and the South Pole in 2005. The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipodally on the opposite side of Earth from the North Pole, at a distance of 20,004 km (12,430 miles) in all directions.
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. Weather fronts rarely penetrate far into the ...
The cooling strengthens the polar vortex and so prevents the outflow of the cold air near the South Pole, which in turn cools the continental mass of the East Antarctic ice sheet. The peripheral areas of Antarctica, especially the Antarctic Peninsula, are then subjected to higher temperatures, which accelerate the melting of the ice. [ 104 ]
The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles. These high latitudes are dominated by floating sea ice covering much of the Arctic Ocean in the north, and by the ...
The polar climate regions are characterized by a lack of warm summers but with varying winters. Every month a polar climate has an average temperature of less than 10 °C (50 °F). Regions with a polar climate cover more than 20% of the Earth's area. Most of these regions are far from the equator and near the poles, and in this case, winter ...
Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is an ocean current that flows clockwise (as seen from the South Pole) from west to east around Antarctica. An alternative name for the ACC is the West Wind Drift. The ACC is the dominant circulation feature of the Southern Ocean and has a mean transport estimated at 100–150 Sverdrups (Sv, million m 3 /s ...
Since 1959, there has been an average temperature increase of >0.05 °C/decade since 1957 across the continent, although it had been uneven. [2] West Antarctica warmed by over 0.1 °C/decade from the 1950s to the 2000s, and the exposed Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by 3 °C (5.4 °F) since the mid-20th century. [3]
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 ...