By Katerina Sinodorou
Antarctica is located in the Arctic Region of the Southern Hemisphere and it is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. It is the fifth largest continent in the world and almost 98% of it is 1.5 kilometers thick ice and at the deepest point the ice is over 4.8 kilometers thick. The overall area is 14,000,000 km2 .
Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest continent. It is considered to be a desert surrounded by sea. Temperatures reach a minimum of between ( −80 °C) and (−90 °C) in winter and reach a maximum of between (5 °C) and (15 °C) in summer. Because Antarctica is very dry it receives less that 2 inches of rain every year and it rarely snows, instead, wind storms blow snow off the surface of the ice which creates the impression of snow storms.
There are no native people in Antarctica but every year 1.000 to 5.000 people reside at the research stations situated across the continent. Antarctica is so cold that only cold-adapted plants and animals survive˙ some of them are penguins, seals, nematodes, tardigrades, mites, many types of algae and other microorganisms, and tundra vegetation.
Antarctica holds roughly one third of all the fresh water on Earth if its ice sheets melted the world’s oceans would rise by 60 to 65 meters everywhere causing terrible problems. The melting of ice has already began because of global warming, soon what everybody fears will happen.
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