2014
Antarctica – the most extreme place on Earth!
Colder and windier than anywhere else on our planet, nothing has melted there in 40 million years; drier than anywhere else on Earth, though covered with 90% of Earth’s fresh water (as ice); the fifth largest continent on Earth has the highest average elevation as it is covered with 5,000 feet of ice.
Situated at the bottom of the Earth, beginning 500 miles south of the southern tip of South America, it spans the South Pole, where it is completely surrounded on all sides by some of Earth’s most treacherous oceans.
The only warm-blooded creatures that can live there year-round, are penguins, plus a few scientists.
As global warming continues, glaciers larger than small countries along both it’s southwestern and eastern edges, have now begun calving. not if, but when just half of this calving ice melts completely over the next 50 years, Earth’s sea level will rise more than 25 feet!
Uninhabitable as the Antarctic continent is, it is so very beautiful: white ice and snow covers the entire continent (except where the rock is so vertical that ice can not cling to it) against its backdrop of roiling oceans filled with thousands of smaller chunks of ice. When the weather is clear, the light is piercingly bright, casting long shadows against the surrounding ocean.
