Antarctica Continent Weather, Temperature, Map and Climate Change | Most Beautiful Travel ,Tour, Place
Antarctica is Earth’s southernmost continent. It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14,200,000 square kilometres (5,500,000 square miles), it is the fifth-largest continent. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. At 0.00008 people per square kilometre, it is by far the least densely populated continent. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by icethat averages 1.9 km (1.2 mi; 6,200 ft) in thickness, which extends to all but the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula,More info:wiki
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#10 ANTARCTICA CLASSIC IN DEPTH,More info:gadventures
Like our “Antarctica Classic” tour, this 13-day expedition introduces you to the magic of the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, but adds on two additional days to better explore its majesty. Part of the reward of arriving in Antarctica is the challenge of negotiating the Drake Passage — and the G Expedition will bring you there safely. Encounter leopard seals lazing on ice floes and immense rookeries of penguins surrounded by towering glaciers. The G Expedition’s expert guides and lecturers offer knowledge and insight that really bring the nature and history of the region to life, creating the adventure of a lifetime.
#9 Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting to Melt,More info:e360.yale
East Antarctica is the coldest spot on earth, long thought to be untouched by warming. But now the glaciers and ice shelves in this frigid region are showing signs of melting, a development that portends dramatic rises in sea levels this century and beyond.
No place on Earth is colder than East Antarctica. Home to the South Pole and making up two-thirds of the southernmost continent, the vast ice sheets of East Antarctica — formed over tens of millions of years — are nearly three miles thick in places. The temperature commonly hovers around -67 degrees Fahrenheit (-55 degrees Celsius); in 2010, some spots on East Antarctica’s polar plateau plunged to a record-breaking -144 degrees F.
#8 Antarctica’s massive lakes, rivers, and streams could help us understand rising sea levels,More info:theverge
Antarctica isn’t a huge, static block of ice where very little goes on. For the first time, scientists are getting a sense of just how active the continent’s extensive network of lakes, rivers, and streams is. These bodies of water have existed for decades on Antarctica, and their meltwater affects the stability of the ice shelf underneath. That, in turn, has important implications for sea level rise.
Antarctica’s landmass is surrounded by hundreds of floating ice shelves that play a key role in preventing sea levels from engulfing our coastal cities. In fact, these ice shelves keep the ground-based ice from flowing into the sea, which would raise sea levels by several feet. Scientists have long known that, in the summer, some surface ice and snow on these ice shelves melts, pooling in lakes and streams. But until now, the phenomenon was thought to be pretty rare, according to Alison Banwell at the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute, who wrote a comment on the new research.
#7 Antarctica: Photos from Earth’s last wilderness,More info:adventure
Some places leave an indelible mark on your soul. I learned this first-hand when I visited the southernmost continent on earth, Antarctica. It was the final destination on a three-month trip that was in itself over a year in the making.
This long trip had allowed me to photograph and explore many places, meet incredible people and capture their stories along the way. But it was this, my final destination, that I was looking forward to the most. I had never set foot in a polar region and after months of waiting and preparing for the harsh conditions, it felt surreal to think I had almost made it to Ushuaia, Argentina; ‘the end of the earth’ and my gateway to Antarctica.
#6 Antarctica: rising bedrock raises hope,More info:geographical
It is not often that positive news comes from Antarctica, especially when it comes to ice. Nonetheless, a team of geologists from Ohio University have discovered that the bedrock of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is rising at a rapid pace. The researchers describe it as a ‘game changer’ when it comes to ice loss prevention in the region.
Scientists were already aware the West Antarctic ground was rising – it is caused by the bedrock rebounding after ice melt. The main surprise was the rate of the uplift under the Amundsen Sea – a speedy 41 millimetres per year. How does that help preserve ice? The idea is that rising rock creates pointed features that pin the ice sheet in place from underneath – ‘pinning points’ – which slow the ice’s descent to the sea.
#5 Antarctica Cruise – Classic Voyage,More info:rei
#4 Now Is the Time to Go to Antarctica,More info:gq
It’s summertime down there! Practically balmy. Here’s everything you need to know about visiting the planet’s most remote destination.
Few travel destinations on the planet have the cachet that Antarctica carries. It is, for Chrissakes, the bottom of the earth. “It’s the most pristine atmosphere in the world,”says Stefan Kredel, a geologist, paleontologist, and expedition leader for Silversea Cruises who’s been traveling to Antarctica every year since 1998. “No matter how many times you go, there’s always a story you can see. It’s kind of an addiction.” The world’s southernmost continent isn’t part of any country, and thanks to strict regulation by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), Antarctica has remained epically majestic even as tourism has exploded in the last thirty years.
#3 HERE’S SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT ANTARCTICA’S ICE,More info:futurity
The earth is rising in a region of Antarctica at one of the fastest rates ever recorded, as ice rapidly disappears and weight lifts off the bedrock, according to a new study.
The findings, which appear in the journal Science, contain surprising and positive implications for the survival of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), which scientists had previously thought could be doomed because of the effects of climate change.
The unexpectedly fast rate of the rising earth may markedly increase the stability of the ice sheet against catastrophic collapse due to ice loss, scientists say.
Moreover, the rapid rise of the earth in this area also affects gravity measurements, which implies that up to 10 percent more ice has disappeared in this part of Antarctica than previously assumed.
#2 Inside Antarctica: the continent whose fate will affect millions,More info:ft
Antarctic scientists discovered the hole in the ozone layer, along with ice cores that shed new light on the planet’s climate history. Yet for most of the 20th century, Antarctica was widely thought to be frozen in time.
Not any more. Parts of the continent are changing fast, including sections of the massive ice sheet that covers it. This holds so much water that if it ever melted completely, global sea levels would rise by nearly 60m. This will not happen any time soon, but even small losses would affect coastal cities and islands around the world, as well as some of the most iconic polar creatures. The race to understand Antarctica has become more urgent, even as conditions on the continent remain as forbidding as ever.
#1 HOW SCIENTISTS TRACKED ANTARCTICA’S STUNNING ICE LOSS,More info:wired
WHEN THE Antarctic wants to rid itself of ice, it has to get creative. The cold is too stubborn to allow surface ice to gently melt into oblivion. Instead, crushed by the immense buildup, ice gets shoved slowly along valleys and gorges until it finally reaches the edge of the continent, walking the plank into its watery grave.
Back in the 1980s, scientists would plant stakes on these so-called “ice streams” to see how fast (or how slowly) they moved. The difficulty, cost, and danger limited the number of measurements. These days, however, scientists studying ice movement on the Antarctic are inundated by measurements—so much so that today, a group of scientists has published the combined results of 24 different surveys of Antarctic ice loss in an edition of Nature. Together, they suggest that the rate of melting has tripled in the past five years. Led by investigators Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds and Erik Ivins of NASA, they believe that the loss, now up to 219 billion metric tons per year, is driven both by faster-flowing ice streams and by warmer ocean waves lapping at the bottom of ice shelves.
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