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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 Antarctic bottom water (AABW) is a type of water mass in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica with temperatures ranging from −0.8 to 2 °C (35 °F) and absolute salinities from 34.6 to 35.0 g/kg. [1] As the densest water mass of the oceans, AABW is found to occupy the depth range below 4000 m of all ocean basins that have a ...
The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of 14 million square kilometres (5.4 million square miles) and an average thickness of over 2 kilometres (1.2 mi). It is the largest of Earth's two current ice sheets, containing 26.5 million cubic kilometres (6,400,000 cubic miles) of ice ...
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice ...
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 ...
The latest data shows high temperatures in portions of East Antarctica – where the most abnormal conditions are ongoing – that are typically between minus 58 and minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit ...
The 2024 Antarctica heat wave refers to a prolonged and significant mid-winter increase in Antarctic temperatures compared to prior winters, causing several regions of Antarctica to reach temperatures 10 °C (18.0 °F) above normal in July 2024, up to a 28 °C (50.4 °F) increase above average. The heat wave was significant for occurring during ...
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]