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Antarctica
Antarctica is an uninhabited continent dedicated to science and governed by The Antarctic Treaty. As questions about the highest, driest, windiest, iciest, darkest continent on earth.
3,949 Questions
What is the national sport of Antarctica?
There is no national sport in Antarctica: Antarctica is not a nation, but a continent. No countries occupy Antarctica, even though there are numerous research stations there, represented by several different countries.
How many antarctic research stations are there?
You can refer to the map, below, to identify those stations that qualify for your definition of 'inland' as locations for research stations on the Antarctic continent.
Why is Antarctica's population so low?
Antarctica is a continent dedicated to science with no native or permanent population. People who work and live there temporarily, do so in support of science. They are hired by their governments and serve periods from a few weeks to a year on the continent.
What are the boundaries of Antarctica?
There are no counties that border Antarctica -- it is surrounded by the Southern Ocean.
What is the name of the highest point in Antarctica?
The highest mountain in Antarctica is Mount Vinson. It has an elevation of 16,066 feet at its highest point. Mount Vinson is located on the southern part of Sentinel Ridge.
Who is the first Indian women to reach Antarctica?
In 1935, Caroline Mikkelsen, wife of a Norwegian whaling captain, became the first known woman to set foot, briefly, in Antarctica. The first women to winter on the continent, were Americans Edith Ronne and Jennie Darlington, wives of Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition members in 1947.
How many daylight hours in Antarctica in January?
Commonly, the 'shortest day of the year' everywhere is the day when there is the least amount of direct sunlight.
On Antarctica the 'shortest day of the year' may contain no sunlight, because the sun doesn't rise -- or set -- every day south of the Antarctic Circle.
Did Ernest Shackleton have a sister?
Ernest Shackleton had 3 children and their names were Raymond, Cecily and Edward.
What will happen when all the ice bergs melt?
The Greenland Ice Sheet holds almost 3 million cubic kilometres of ice (684,00 cubic miles). If it all melted sea levels all over the world would rise by 7.2 metres (24 feet).
Greenland will also rise up, because of the great weight of ice removed. This is called isostatic rebound.
What month would Antarctica have 24 hours of sunlight?
Months with no sunset can range from late October to late February -- depending on where you are on the continent.
What are the enemies of an Emperor Penguin?
Penguins in general have only few natural predators. On land, skuas (common name for members of a bird genus of the gull family), gulls (common name for species with long-winged, web-footed seabirds) and giant petrels (also a sea seabird) feed on penguins eggs and chicks. While seals hunt adult penguins and destroys their nests.
How many months does it snow in Antarctica a year?
The same number of months as there are in each season anywhere on earth, about three.
How much fresh water is locked in antarctica's iceap?
The ice sheet that covers the Antarctic continent is all fresh water. According to its Wikipedia entry:
"It covers an area of almost 14 million square km (5.4 million sq. miles) and contains 26.5 million cubic km of ice (6.36 million cubic miles)."
What is the coldest month in Antarctica and what is the temperature?
Antarctica is as large as USA and Mexico, combined, so 'coldest month' varies, depending on where you are on the continent.
Generally, the coldest month is the month before the sun comes up, and again, this month varies, depending on how far you are on the continent beyond the Antarctic Circle.
The coldest temperature recorded on the continent was recorded at Vostok Research Station (Russia) in July 1983. The measurements were −89.2 °C, −128.6 °F; 184.0 K. This is the coldest temperature recorded on Earth.
What range of temperature for antarctica from coldest to warmest?
At its highest in "summer", the maximum temperature in this most arid and inhospitable of regions is a balmy 40 degrees F. On the other hand, during the harsh winter season, in which there is absolutely no sun for 3 whole months, and not to mention the immense power of the Katabatic wind with speeds up to 200 mph, the weather can dip as low as -128 degrees F.
Why dont honey bees live in Antarctica?
Bees need a food source (pollen) that is not freely available in Antarctica. Also they would not be able to survive in the climate in Antarctica due to the low temperature.
How are the penguins adapted to live in the Antarctica?
Penguins do not live on the Antarctic continent, although several types do visit its beaches to breed. They breed there because there are no land predators, except other breeding sea birds, such as skuas. At sea, which is the home to all penguins, they are simply part of that food chain.
What is the line of latitude that passes through Antarctica?
The area that lies south of the Antarctic Circle is called the Antarctic. The zone north is the Southern Temperate Zone. The Arctic Circle is where the equivalent line of latitude lies in the northern hemisphere.
Global warming is the warming up of the planet above the temperature it "should" be. It is such a concern at the moment as it seems that the temperature is rising at a rate far faster than ever before and it is thought that it may be the activities of the human population over the last 150 years or so that is doing it.
Mean temperatures over the whole planet have risen by about 0.74° C (1.33° F) in the last 100 years. More than half of this increase has happened in the last 25 years. The temperature records used to calculate this are extensive, they have been assembled from thousands of observation sites on land and sea covering a large, representative portion of the Earth's surface. Checks and allowances have been made for any bias that may have arisen from the weather stations or instrument changes.
This is a worry because while the planet can cope with changes in temperature which are known to have happened over periods of tens and hundreds of thousands of years in the past and certainly over millions of years.
The current rate of change is much, much faster than any changes have ever before as far as we are aware and this is a real problem as while animals and plants can adapt to slow changes by migration for instance, a rapid change will inevitably lead to large extinctions of many species. The human population of the earth is also dependent on a stable climate for established agriculture and also cities, millions if not billions of people stand to suffer from the consequences of global warming mainly the most vulnerable people in the undeveloped nations.
Climate changes in the past over Geological time periods (millions and tens of millions of years) have been very drastic. During cold periods, much of the planet, even thousands of miles from both poles have been ice covered by huge glaciers and during warm periods, the same regions may have been subtropical or even tropical. Accompanying this have been large changes in sea level so that some areas of land have either become flooded completely or left high and dry.
It is potentially an enormous problem as if the global temperature rises to a level where it is affecting the Antarctic icecaps, they may begin to melt and cause sea-level rises globally measured in meters. There are a great many cities around the world that are on the coast and they would be flooded and probably have to be abandoned. There are also a great many countries, especially poorer countries where a large part of the population live in coastal regions. In this case the farmland would be flooded and the people left homeless and without the ability to feed themselves. In some cases entire island nations (albeit small ones) in the Pacific Ocean could simply disappear.
There are two questions about Global Warming that the world has at the moment and neither of them has a clear answer, there is much scientific debate and an awful lot of political argument too.
Is fishing in Antarctica allowed?
Earth south of 60 degrees South Latitude, which includes Antarctica, is governed by The Antarctic Treaty, which dedicates the area to science.
There is zero fishing in Antarctica, except in pursuit of science.
What two countries are smaller than Antarctica?
There are no countries in Antarctica, however, several countries have "claimed" territory for their own in the past, though for the most part these claims are largely symbolic and the continent is treated as a nature preserve by the international community. Mostly, those claims are not recognized internationally, and the United States does not recognize any of them. The countries of Chile, Argentina, France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand have all made claims on Antarctica.
The United States Government has not claimed any land in Antarctica, though it has reserved the right to do so in the future (as has Russia). Large parts of the Antarctic coast and interior were first observed by American (U.S. Navy) sea captains and American aviators. In fact, the part of Antarctica called "Wilkes Land" was the first part of the Antarctic mainland that were ever seen, and it was named for Capt. John Wilkes of the U.S. Navy, the commander of the first ship to discover that seacoast. Other parts of Antarctica were first seen from airplanes commanded by Capt. Richard E. Byrd of the U.S. Navy. Byrd always had one or more crewmen on his flights, including his main pilot.
The leaders of the land exploration of Antarctica came from the United Kingdom(Shackleton and Scott) and Norway(Amundsen).
What is the maximum mean temperature in summer and winter in Antarctica?
Because Antarctica is a "polar" region, there is no precipitation, it has no lakes or rivers and is in fact the driest continent. Average temperatures in the Antarctic interior get down to -70 degrees Celsius during the winter months and -35 degrees Celsius in the warmer months. The coastal temperatures are much warmer with a range of -15 to -32 Celsius in Winter and -5 to +5 Celsius in Summer. The interior of Antarctica is considered the world's driest desert because the extreme cold freezes water vapour out of the air. Annual snowfall on the polar plateau is equivalent to less than 5 cm of rain. Antarctica has some of the strongest winds on earth, with some winds reaching 320 kph.
