Facts About Antarctica

Antarctica, the coldest and windiest continent on the planet, is a very interesting place. Antarctica is a pretty large continent, about 1.4x the size of the United States. It’s also roughly the size of Australia.

Whether you’re planning a vacation to Antarctica, or you just want to learn some quick facts about Antarctica, read on.

Antarctica No Permanent Residents

Due to the extremely cold winters in Antarctica, there are literally zero known full-time inhabitants of the continent. In the summer, roughly 4,000 people might be on the entire continent at any given time. These people will be stationed in research centers and scientific bases. An additional ~30,000 tourists come through each summer. During the summer months, it would be extremely surprising if there were more than 1,000 people left on the continent, and that includes research bases.

Antarctica’s Impressive Claims to Fame

Some facts about Antarctica are hard to believe. For instance, Antarctica is said to have 90% of the world’s ice, and 70% of the world’s water (which is frozen as ice). The largest single ice shelf is the Ross Ice Shelf, which is roughly the size of France. Only about 0.32% of the landmass of Antarctica is NOT covered in ice. The ridiculous volume of ice is being slowly diminished by the threats of Global Warming. As the ice melts, serious changes are made to the landscape, and as the water level rises, even more big changes are made by nature. Who knows how Antarctica is going to look in 50 years.

COLD!

People spread lots of false facts about Antarctica, but any about its temperature are probably true, even if they sound false. The average SUMMER temperature at the South Pole is around -17.5 degrees. The average winter temperature at the same location is a biting -76 degrees. The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Antarctica, at the Vostok station. The temperature was recorded at a whopping -128.6 degrees F.

Newly Discovered Antarctica

Though people have known about Antarctica’s existence for quite some time, nobody actually saw the massive continent until 1820. In 1821, the first people set foot on the desolate land. It wasn’t until 1898 that anyone actually setup a semi-permanent camp and stayed through the winter, and it wasn’t until 1911 that the South Pole was actually reached. Today, with our technology and innovation, we can fully explore the continent. There is still vast expanses of land that have yet to be fully explored, and it’s hard to find anything significant due to the massive amounts of ice and snow covering everything. Because of this, many facts about Antarctica are not confirmed, and there is a good amount of confusion surrounding the continent as a whole. There is almost always at least 2 or 3 different research firms operating in Antarctica, so we’re sure to know more solid information within the next few years.