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The warming of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has caused the weakening or collapse of ice shelves, which float just offshore of glaciers and stabilize them. Many coastal glaciers have been losing mass and retreating, causing net-annual ice loss across Antarctica, [37]: 1264 although the East Antarctic ice sheet continues to gain ice inland.
Antarctica is the coldest, driest continent on Earth, and has the highest average elevation. [19] Antarctica's dryness means the air contains little water vapor and conducts heat poorly. [18] The Southern Ocean surrounding the continent is far more effective at absorbing heat than any other ocean. [20]
The Antarctic sea ice cover is highly seasonal, with very little ice in the austral summer, expanding to an area roughly equal to that of Antarctica in winter.It peaks (~18 × 10^6 km 2) during September (comparable to the surface area of Pluto), which marks the end of austral winter, and retreats to a minimum (~3 × 10^6 km 2) in February.
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 .
A major winter storm in mid-December 2020 produced snowfall rates of 4 to 6 inches per hour in south-central New York near Binghamton. That resulted in totals near 3 feet in about 12 hours, the ...
The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, [1] [note 4] comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. [5] With a size of 21,960,000 km 2 (8,480,000 sq mi), it is the second-smallest of the five principal oceanic divisions, smaller than the Pacific ...
At around 600 miles wide and up to 6,000 meters (nearly four miles) deep, the Drake is objectively a vast body of water. To us, that is. To the planet as a whole, less so.
The warming of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has caused the weakening or collapse of ice shelves, which float just offshore of glaciers and stabilize them. Many coastal glaciers have been losing mass and retreating, causing net-annual ice loss across Antarctica, [84]: 1264 although the East Antarctic ice sheet continues to gain ice inland.