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The frozen continent of Antarctica was the last continent humanity set foot on. The first documented landings made below the Antarctic Circle took place in 1820, when Admiral Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and the crew of the Vostok and Mirny, as part of the Russian Antarctic Expedition, made land at Peter I Island and Alexander Island.
In 2022, a study narrowed the warming of the Central area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet between 1959 and 2000 to 0.31 °C (0.56 °F) per decade, and conclusively attributed it to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human activity. [50] East Antarctica cooled in the 1980s and 1990s, even as West Antarctica warmed (left-hand side).
East Antarctica is significantly larger than West Antarctica, and similarly remains widely unexplored in terms of its volcanic potential. While there are some indications that there is volcanic activity under the East Antarctic Ice Sheet , there is not a significant amount of present information on the subject.
Location and diagram of Lake Vostok, a prominent subglacial lake beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.. East Antarctic Ice Sheet is located directly above the East Antarctic Shield – a craton (stable area of the Earth's crust) with the area of 10,200,000 km 2 (3,900,000 sq mi), which accounts for around 73% of the entire Antarctic landmass. [19]
Antarctica is governed by about 30 countries, all of which are parties of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty System. According to the terms of the treaty, military activity, mining, nuclear explosions, and nuclear waste disposal are all prohibited in Antarctica. Tourism, fishing and research are the main human activities in and around Antarctica.
The area around Don Juan Pond is covered with sodium chloride and calcium chloride salts that have precipitated as the water evaporated. [4] [5] The area and volume of Don Juan Pond vary over time. According to the United States Geological Survey topographical map published in 1977, the area was approximately 0.25 km 2 (62 acres). However, in ...
The region covers some 20 percent of the Southern Hemisphere, of which 5.5 percent (14 million km 2) is the surface area of the Antarctica continent itself. All of the land and ice shelves south of 60°S latitude are administered under the Antarctic Treaty System .
The total volume of water in rivers is estimated at 2,120 km 3 (510 cu mi), or 0.49% of the surface fresh water on Earth. [2] Rivers and basins are often compared not according to their static volume, but to their flow of water, or surface run off. The distribution of river runoff across the Earth's surface is very uneven.