Portal:Antarctica/Intro

Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent, overlying the South Pole. It is situated in the southern hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by ocean all around i.e. the Southern Ocean. The nearest land mass is South America at 965 km. Its area is close to 14 Million sq km, which is approximately 58 times the size of UK or 1.4 times the size USA. of It is the fifth largest continent after Asia, Africa, North America and South America.
On average, Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. The minimum recorded surface temperature on the planet i.e. -89.2C was made at the Russian research Vostok in Antarctica on 21st July 1983. 98 % of the total area of Antarctica is covered by ice.The mean thickness of the ice sheet is 1829m and the maximum thickness has been found out to be 4776m. While most of the ice in East Antarctica is on bed rock, in West Antarctica a majority of it floats on water. Due to accumulation of ice over the past millions of years, the continent has got depressed by about 600 m on average.

Since there is little precipitation, except at the coasts, the interior of the continent is technically the largest desert in the world. There are no permanent human residents and there is no evidence of any existing or pre-historic indigenous population. Only cold-adapted plants and animals survive there, including mosses and lichen, and several species of penguin, ice seal and the Antarctic fur seal.