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6 days ago · Antarctica, the world’s southernmost continent, is almost wholly covered by an ice sheet and is about 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square km) in size. It is divided into East Antarctica (largely composed of a high ice-covered plateau) and West Antarctica (an archipelago of ice-covered mountainous islands).
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. 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).
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. The Antarctic covers approximately 20 percent of the Southern Hemisphere.
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.
Location of the Antarctic on a map of the Earth. 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]
From the air, you see that it covers a huge area, about 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles), about half the size of the United States. Antarctica is just slightly larger than another continent in the southern hemisphere, Australia. You also see that it is quite mountainous.
Its land area is about 5.5 million sq mi (14.2 million sq km). The southern portions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans surround it ( see Antarctic regions). Antarctica approximates a circular form, except for the outflaring Antarctic Peninsula and two principal bays, the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea.
