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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]
Nelson Island, Antarctica 1960 Fire (building) 8 Mirny Station fire [7] [8] [9] Mirny Station, Antarctica 1823 Shipwreck: 7 Jenny [10] Drake Passage, Southern Ocean Most likely a legend 1958 Aircraft: 7 Cape Hallett Bay plane crash [11] Cape Hallett Bay, Antarctica 6 survivors 1966 Aircraft: 6 Ross Ice Shelf plane crash [12] Ross Ice Shelf ...
It is washed by the Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean or, depending on definition, the southern Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. It has an area of more than 14.2 million km 2 . Antarctica is the largest ice desert in the world.
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 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.
The polar regions include the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean. The Arctic Ocean covers 14,000,000 km 2 (5,400,000 sq mi). [ 13 ] In the spring the ice covers an area of 5,000,000–8,000,000 km 2 (1,900,000–3,100,000 sq mi) and in the winter it is twice that.
Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse.
Visualization of the ice and snow covering Earth's northern and southern polar regions Northern Hemisphere permafrost (permanently frozen ground) in purple. 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.