Antarctica
Mr. Penn spent 6 weeks on Antarctica and at the Geographic South Pole in 2018!
Antarctica is a continent. It is Earth's fifth-largest continent and is covered almost completely in ice. Antarctica covers Earth's South Pole.
The continental ice sheet contains approximately 7 million cubic miles (about 29 million cubic km) of ice, representing about 90 percent of the world’s ice and 80 percent of its fresh water. Its average thickness is about 5,900 feet (1,800 metres). Ice shelves, or ice sheets floating on the sea, cover many parts of the Ross and Weddell seas. These shelves—the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—together with other shelves around the continental margins, fringe about 45 percent of Antarctica. Around the Antarctic coast, shelves, glaciers, and ice sheets continually “calve,” or discharge, icebergs into the seas.
Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth. The average temperature in Antarctica in the winter is minus 34.4 Celcius (minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature in the center of Antarctica is much lower than the temperature on the coasts. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was minus 89.4 C (minus 129 F). The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 15 C (59 F).
Antarctica has just two seasons: summer and winter. Antarctica has six months of daylight in its summer and six months of darkness in its winter.
The seasons are caused by the tilt of Earth's axis in relation to the sun. The direction of the tilt never changes. But as the Earth orbits the sun, different parts of the planet are exposed to direct sunlight. During summer, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted toward the sun and is in constant sunlight. In the winter, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted away from the sun, causing the continent to be dark.
Antarctica is considered a desert because it receives very little rain or snowfall. The small amount of snow that does fall does not melt but builds up over hundreds and thousands of years to form large, thick ice sheets. Antarctica's terrain is made up of glaciers, ice shelves and icebergs. Antarctica has no trees or bushes. The only plants that can survive the extreme cold are lichens, mosses and algae.
