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Antarctica ( / ænˈtɑːrktɪkə / ⓘ) [note 1] is Earth 's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean ), it contains the geographic South Pole.
As defined by the Antarctic Treaty System, the Antarctic region is everything south of the 60°S latitude. The Treaty area covers Antarctica and the archipelagos of the Balleny Islands , Peter I Island , Scott Island , the South Orkney Islands , and the South Shetland Islands . [5]
Around Antarctica is the Southern Ocean. It is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. [2] About 99% of Antarctica is covered by ice. This ice averages at least 1.6 kilometers (1.0 miles) thick. Antarctica is the hottest, driest and windiest continent. It is also, on average, the highest of all ...
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 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.
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 ...
Vocabulary. The continent of Antarctica makes up most of the Antarctic region. The Antarctic is a cold, remote area in the Southern Hemisphere encompassed by the Antarctic Convergence. The Antarctic Convergence is an uneven line of latitude where cold, northward-flowing Antarctic waters meet the warmer waters of the world’s oceans.
