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Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km 2 (5,500,000 sq mi). Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi).
Antarctic. The Antarctic ( / ænˈtɑːrtɪk / or / ænˈtɑːrktɪk /, American English also / æntˈɑːrtɪk / or / æntˈɑːrktɪk /; commonly / æˈnɑːrtɪk /) [Note 1] is a polar region around Earth 's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole . The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen ...
The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn in the 15th and ...
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 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 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 wildlife of Antarctica are extremophiles, having adapted to the dryness, low temperatures, and high exposure common in Antarctica. The extreme weather of the interior contrasts to the relatively mild conditions on the Antarctic Peninsula and the subantarctic islands , which have warmer temperatures and more liquid water.
The geology of Antarctica covers the geological development of the continent through the Archean, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic eons . The geological study of Antarctica has been greatly hindered by the fact that nearly all of the continent is continuously covered with a thick layer of ice. However, techniques such as remote sensing have begun to ...
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