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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). [22]
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.
The boundaries of the Roaring Forties are not consistent: the wind-stream shifts north or south depending on the season. The strong and continuous winds in the Roaring Forties make this zone advantageous for wind power in places such as New Zealand and Tasmania.
Two temperature records were set on February 6, one in each hemisphere, one for warmth, the other for mind-numbing cold. On Feb. 6, 2020, five years ago, Antarctica set its all-time record high of ...
Antarctica locks up 90 percent of the world's fresh water as ice and would raise sea levels by about 200 ft if it were all to melt. Antarctica hits record high temperature at balmy 17.5°C (63.5 ...
The current is circumpolar due to the lack of any landmass connecting with Antarctica and this keeps warm ocean waters away from Antarctica, enabling that continent to maintain its huge ice sheet. Associated with the Circumpolar Current is the Antarctic Convergence , where the cold Antarctic waters meet the warmer waters of the subantarctic ...
Antarctica lost a staggering 280% more ice mass in the 2000s and 2010s than it lost in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Southern Annular Mode is usually defined as the difference in the zonal mean sea level pressure at 40°S (mid-latitudes) and 65°S (Antarctica). [1]The Antarctic oscillation (AAO, to distinguish it from the Arctic oscillation or AO), also known as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), is a low-frequency mode of atmospheric variability of the southern hemisphere that is defined as a belt of ...