The Antarctic glaciers are the largest in the world, as they represent the drainage system of the world's largest ice sheet. Many of the glaciers would be more correctly called ice streams, since they do not have clearly defined boundaries. Where the glacier flows into the bay, reaching the shore, the ice is afloat and an ice shelf is formed. And a glacier descending from a flat part of the coast does not form an ice shelf, but, once afloat, continues to flow directly into the sea. Such a protrusion is called a glacier tongue and is usually very unstable, although the tongue of the Erebus Glacier, which flows into McMurdo Bay, often extends into the sea for more than 10 km before breaking off. The largest ice shelves of Antarctica - Ross and Filchner - are so large that they are fed by several glaciers and ice flows. The Rutford Glacier, which flows into the southwest corner of the Ronne Ice Shelf near the Ellsworth Mountains, reaches over 1 mile (1.6 km). in thickness in the place where it is afloat, and demonstrates the most powerful floating ice known in the world.

Lambert Glacier - the largest and longest glacier in the world

The Lambert Glacier in East Antarctica flows approximately north along the 90° East meridian through the Prince Charles Mountains into Prydz Bay. Some tourist ships sail near these places, but to see the glacier, you need to move inland, best by helicopter.

The Lambert Glacier in East Antarctica is probably the world's largest glacier. Its width reaches 64 km. where it crosses the Prince Charles Mountains, and the length, if you include its marine extension, the Amery Ice Shelf, is about 700 km. It collects ice from about a fifth of the East Antarctic ice sheet; if you make a calculation, it turns out that approximately 12% of the fresh water reserves on Earth pass through the Lambert Glacier. This astonishing figure is as difficult to comprehend as the greatness of the Antarctic glacier. The popular image of an Alpine or Himalayan glacier flowing down a slope like an icy river is, strictly speaking, inapplicable to the Lambert Glacier because of its colossal size. Shooting from space is the best way to see enough of it to know it's actually a glacier.

Glaciers move slowly. The fastest, the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland, covers 7 km. per year, while the Lambert Glacier slides off the Prince Charles Mountains at a speed of only 0.23 km. per year, gradually accelerating to 1 km. per year at the Amery ice barrier. However, it moves, although not quickly, but powerfully, since about 35 cubic meters pass through it per year. km. ice.

The surface of a glacier like this, when viewed from a great height, such as from an airplane, is marked by streamlines - natural ice ridges that indicate the direction of its movement, like strokes of a giant brush on the oil of a panoramic picture. From the ground, these ribs are invisible, but they can be identified by sections of parallel cracks. They are created by different speeds of ice movement inside the glacier, they can be formed by irregularities in the glacier bed or obstacles in its path. In this case, a zone of random cracks is formed, as, for example, in places of a sharp change in the angle of the terrain; this phenomenon is called an icefall and is analogous to a waterfall on a river. Some of the fissures below Gillock Island, caused by the forced flow of the glacier around this island, are over 400 m wide and 40 km long. in length, surpassing some alpine glaciers in size.

Through these huge cracks, or rifts, snow bridges are thrown, instilling timidity in the traveler who is forced to use them. However, despite their huge size, crossing them is quite safe, since the additional weight of the tractor is infinitesimal compared to the weight of snow supported by the bridge. Sir Vivian Fuchs's Transantarctic Expedition (1955-1958) encountered similar crevasses after leaving the South Pole, and is said to have descended the slope to the bridge and then climbed the slope again on the other side. The main danger was represented by small cracks at the edge of the bridge itself. Elsewhere, glacier travel can be relatively easy, as long as known cracking areas are avoided. Like the rivers of Africa to the pioneers of this continent, the glaciers of Antarctica often offer explorers an obvious route deep into the mainland. Shackleton discovered the Bridmore Glacier, which provided a direct route from the Ross Ice Shelf to the Polar Plate; Scott and four of his comrades chose the same path for their fateful journey to the pole.

An ice shelf usually forms where glaciers and ice flows from a continental ice sheet empty into a bay. Having descended along the bottom to a certain depth - usually 300 m - the ice becomes floating and various glaciers merge into a single field. This field continues to grow until it fills the bay. Leaving the bay, no matter how large, the front part of the glacier, having lost the restraining influence of the mouth of the bay, loses stability and becomes vulnerable to the forces of the open ocean. The glacier gradually breaks off along the line connecting the extreme points of the bay, and the glacier "calving" occurs. The ice shelf also loses ice, melting from below and forming cold bottom currents that move north over the ocean floor to then rise to the surface, oxygenating tropical waters. Although a glacier, on the other hand, is thickened by snow falling on its surface, the overall result is that it thins out towards the open sea. The ice barrier - the edge of the glacier facing the sea - reaches a thickness of about 180 m and rises above sea level by 20-30 m. An object left on the surface of the ice shelf will gradually descend as it approaches the ocean.

Ross Glacier - the largest ice shelf in Antarctica

The Ross Ice Shelf can usually be reached by ship or aircraft from New Zealand during the transfer of personnel and supplies to the US McMurdo Station and New Zealand's Scott Base. Tourist ships also visit these places, but passengers rarely see anything other than a cliff of the ice barrier.

Captain James Cook, on his second voyage, in 1772-1775, became the first person to penetrate the high latitudes of Antarctica, but he never managed to see the continent; all his attempts to sail further south were frustrated by pack ice. It was not until 1840 that Captain James Clark Ross, by then Britain's most experienced Arctic navigator, sailed south and successfully broke through the pack ice belt into the waters now known as the Ross Sea. He discovered Ross Island, and to the east of it, a ridge, which he called the Victoria Barrier and about which he wrote: "... we had the same chance to overcome this mass, as if we were trying to swim through the cliffs of Dover."
Ross was shocked. Ice cliffs from 46 to 61 meters high hung over his ships, and to the south nothing was visible but an endless ice plain. In fact, the Ross Ice Shelf is a roughly triangular ice sheet whose thickness ranges from 183 m at the front ice barrier to 1300 m inland. Its area is 542344 sq. km. - this is more than the territory of Spain and almost equal to the area of ​​​​France; and since it is afloat, it rises and falls under the action of the ebb and flow of the tides. Large pieces of shelf ice break off and turn into tabular icebergs, the largest of those recorded, with an area of ​​31,080 sq. km, was larger than Belgium.

The Ross Ice Shelf is fed by glaciers. Many of them, such as the Beardmore Glacier, descend from the Transantarctic Mountains, but glacial flows coming from Mary Byrd Land bring in more ice. A ship sailing through the Ross Sea in 1950 encountered an iceberg with a corner of a building protruding from its side, identified as a fragment of a house from one of Admiral Byrd's Little America stations built some 30 years earlier.

The ice shelf is mostly free of cracks and easy to navigate. It is comparatively even, but the progress of the sleigh depends on the condition of the surface. Snowy areas are difficult to pass, whether the sled is being pulled by people, dogs, or tractors. Often there are sastrugi - dense, wind-created ridges of snow that, if their height exceeds 30 cm, can make travel difficult. It is especially disappointing when the depressions between the ridges are filled with soft snow, the surface appears smooth, and people and tractors fail.

Ross Ice Shelf

(Antarctica)

As you know, the great navigator Cook never managed to reach the shores of Antarctica. Only almost half a century after its voyage, the ships of the Russian expedition of Bellingshausen and Lazarev managed to approach the coast of the southern continent in two places. And twenty years later, in 1840, the famous polar explorer, discoverer of the North Magnetic Pole, James Clark Ross, went to Antarctica to try to discover this time its southern counterpart.

And although he did not manage to visit the South Magnetic Pole, the brave captain made many important geographical discoveries, and now his name rightfully adorns the map of Antarctica, and more than once.

Ross was the first to travel this far south, reaching through dangerous floating ice to almost eighty degrees south latitude. He discovered the largest and most active active volcano in Antarctica - Erebus, put on the map the sea and the island, later named after him, and then tried to go even further south. But his path was blocked by a gigantic ice wall that was as high as a twenty-story building, plunging vertically into the sea.

"Fighting this barrier is like trying to swim through the cliffs of Dover," Ross wrote in his diary.

It was the edge of the largest ice shelf in Antarctica, which also now bears the name of the brave English navigator. The ice barrier that stood in his way, the captain named the Victoria Barrier, in honor of his queen. (Now, however, history has done justice, and on the maps it is listed as the Ross Ice Barrier.)

The Ross Glacier almost completely fills the entire southern part of the Ross Sea. From east to west, it stretches for eight hundred kilometers, and crashes into the depths of Antarctica for almost a thousand. In area, it is equal to the island of Madagascar and exceeds the territory of Sweden, Spain or France. The thickness of the triangular ice plate gradually decreases from south to north. Off the coast of Antarctica, it is more than a kilometer, and near the ocean, where its outer edge breaks off the Ross Ice Barrier, the ice is about two hundred meters thick.

Ice shelves are formed where continental ice flows descend from the coast of Antarctica into the bays of the ocean. At the same time, they continue to move along the bottom of the continental shelf - the shelf - to a depth of about three hundred meters. Then the ice tongue emerges, merging with neighboring glacial ledges into a single mass, and this entire mass of ice continues to move until it fills the entire bay.

Having gone beyond its limits, the glacier loses the protection of the shores, and the waves rocking the huge ice field begin to break off its edges. This is how table icebergs are formed - the floating ice islands of Antarctica. Such icebergs are much larger than the ice mountains that break away from the glaciers of Svalbard or Greenland. Sometimes their magnitude is simply amazing. For example, in the winter of 2000, New Zealand sailors noticed an ice mass the size of the island of Jamaica south of their shores!

And the largest table iceberg had an area of ​​​​more than thirty thousand square kilometers, that is, it was larger than Sicily. Such ice islands usually rise thirty to forty meters above the water, and go two hundred meters or more deep.

The Ross Ice Shelf is fed by glaciers flowing down the slopes of the Queen Maud Land mountains and the Transantarctic Ridge. These mighty mountain systems, rising four kilometers above sea level, give rise to several glacial streams that merge into a single ice field on the coast of the Ross Sea. It is slowly but steadily moving towards the open sea at a speed of up to a kilometer per year. As you move, the ice melts from below, and cold bottom currents form, directed northward towards the ocean.

The outer edge of the glacier, the same Ross Barrier, really remotely resembles the chalk cliffs of Dover, so close to the heart of English sailors. It is here that, under the influence of storms, the two-hundred-meter thickness of the glacier cracks and ice islands-icebergs break off. Their number in the Antarctic, compared with the Arctic waters, is enormous. Sometimes up to a thousand floating ice blocks can be seen from the deck of a ship at the same time.

However, the formation of cracks and the separation of pieces of the ice field are typical only for the marginal zone of the glacier. In general, there are no cracks on the ice shelves, and it is much easier to move along them than along the continental ice of Antarctica. It is no coincidence that most of the expeditions to the South Pole started from the Ross Sea.

This area attracted researchers also because a whole bunch of sights are concentrated here that deserve the attention of scientists, in particular, the active volcano Erebus, the reflections of fire over which turned it into a kind of beacon for everyone who swims in the Ross Sea. And nearby, on Victoria Land, the South Magnetic Pole was located until recently. Now its location has shifted to the north, and the pole point is in the ocean, near the coast of Antarctica.

The discovery and study of the magnetic pole on the southern mainland is associated with the name of the famous Australian polar explorer Mawson, a member of the English Antarctic expedition of Shackleton. He was there while Shackleton and three companions were trying to storm the South Pole. The Englishman's attempt was unsuccessful, and the pole was conquered by people only four years later, when the Norwegian Amundsen and the Scot Skotg reached it. Mawson, in the absence of the expedition leader, did not waste time and managed, together with two other researchers, to visit a point that had been attracting scientists since the time of Ross for half a century. The same Mawson with two satellites was the first to conquer the formidable volcano Erebus, towering four kilometers above the eternal ice of Antarctica.

It happened in 1908. Scientists climbed to the top of the fire-breathing mountain in three days and examined all three of its craters. The largest of them was three hundred meters deep and eight hundred meters in diameter. At the bottom of it, lava, fire and smoke escaped from several holes, and there was a liquid lava lake. Combined with severe frost and wind, this made being at the top "not the most comfortable thing to do", according to Mawson.

It should be noted that the lava lake of Erebus, which exists today, is the rarest phenomenon in the world of volcanoes. In addition to the Antarctic giant, long-lived lakes of liquid lava are noted only in the crater of the Kilauea volcano in the Hawaiian Islands and in the Nyi Ragongo crater in Africa. However, the fiery lake among the eternal snows and ices makes, no doubt, a stronger impression.

There is enough work in the Ross Sea not only for geologists and magnetologists. Biologists also consider this area one of the most interesting in Antarctica. Despite the harsh climate, the edge of the ice shelf is teeming with life. Cold currents carrying oxygen-rich water promote the development of marine microorganisms and algae, which in turn attract numerous schools of tiny shrimps and a variety of fish. Baleen whales swim in the Ross Sea for shrimp. And fish are a desirable food for seals and seabirds. By the way, it was Ross who once discovered here a new, fourth species of Antarctic seals. It was named the Ross seal.

However, birds far outnumber whales and pinnipeds. Tens of thousands of gulls, petrels, barn swallows and skuas nest on the rocks near the edges of the ice barrier. The latter often fly into the interior of the continent. American winterers observed them even at the South Pole.

But the most numerous inhabitants of Antarctica are, of course, penguins. The population of their colonies reaches several hundred thousand birds. There are several types of penguins, as well as seals: small penguins Hell ate, larger ones - royal ones and the largest ones - emperor ones. Particularly interesting are the emperor penguins living in only two places in Antarctica. These large birds sometimes weigh up to eighty kilograms and have tremendous strength. There was a case when five sailors could not keep one such "emperor".

The female penguin lays the only egg directly on the ice, after which the father of the family takes care of it. He lays the egg on his paws and covers it with a fat fold hanging down from the bottom of his body. After that, the male does not move for three months and does not eat, hatching offspring, and the female restores her strength during this time, fishing in coastal waters. Then the parents switch roles.

Penguins have adapted perfectly to life in the harsh conditions of the Ross Sea region, where they have only one dangerous enemy - the leopard seal. But these predatory seals are relatively few in Antarctic waters, and penguin colonies thrive despite Antarctica's harsh climate.

The curiosity and friendly disposition of these unusual birds greatly brighten up the life of polar explorers on the icy continent. The curiosity of penguins knows no bounds. It is enough, for example, to turn on a tape recorder, as a dozen feathered "music lovers" gather around a person to listen to music.

At one time, the Ross Ice Barrier did not allow sailing ships to pass to the south, and even now its wall is "too tough" even for modern icebreakers. However, on the other hand, it was from here, from the Bay of Whales (the only place on the barrier where its height drops to seven meters), that Amudsen began his victorious march to the Pole. Expeditions of the famous polar explorers Shackleton, Mawson, Charcot, Drygalsky and others visited here in their time. And now the American polar station McMurdo is working here.

And if we talk about the most studied area of ​​​​Antarctica, the southernmost continent, then, without a doubt, this is the Ross Sea area - a huge body of water stretching almost to the pole, covered with a white shell of the largest glacier on Earth - the Ross Ice Shelf.

There is so much we don't know yet.

The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica is currently the largest floating block of ice in the world: the size of the glacier is no more, no less than Spain, and almost a kilometer thick. The ocean below it is regarded by experts as one of the most important but least understood parts of the climate system.

A team from New Zealand's Ross Ice Shelf Research Program has melted a hole hundreds of meters down to explore the ocean and reveal the glacier's vulnerability to climate change. Their measurements showed that the ocean is warming and renewing, but not in the ways that everyone expected.

Hidden Ocean.

Over the past century, all the largest blocks of ice have been discovered near the coast of Antarctica. These giants hold back the Antarctic ice sheet, which, if released into the ocean and melted further, could raise sea levels so much that it would forever change the landscape of our planet.

An ice shelf looks like a giant sheet of ice that forms when ordinary glaciers break off land and merge as they float close to the shore.

Ice shelves lose ice as a result of breaking off large pieces from them, or by melting ice from below. Because the water flowing under the Ross Ice Shelf is cold (minus 1.9 degrees Celsius), it is called the "cold cavity".

If the water warms up, the future of the ice shelf and upstream ice could change in a matter of minutes. However, for now, the ocean located under the glacier is excluded from all models of the future Earth's climate that exist today.

In the late 1970s, an international team of scientists attempted to explore this ocean. For five years, the team repeatedly tried to drill through the ice using several types of drills, but in vain. Now, with new and improved technology, the New Zealand team completed the job in one season.

The main conclusion is that seawater circulates through the cavity, flowing into the seafloor as relatively warm, salty water. She eventually finds her way to shore - except of course for the shoreline under the ice (800 meters down).

There it begins to melt the ice shelf from below and then flows through the ice shelf back to the open ocean.

Looking through the hole into the ice.

The New Zealand team, including drillers, glaciologists, biologists, seismologists, oceanographers, worked from November to January, supported by tracked vehicles and, if local weather allowed, DHC-6 aircraft flew in to help.

As is often the case in polar oceanography, getting to the ocean was the hardest part. The team was faced with the task of melting a well several hundred meters deep and only 25 centimeters in diameter! But as soon as the well reaches a depth of 300 meters, the task is greatly simplified. The risk of biological contamination in such conditions is reduced by many percent than if the study was carried out, for example, in the jungle. Nevertheless, no one canceled the threat of freezing of all tools or the well itself.

moving world

The team is located right in the middle of the glacier. But if their camp stood motionless, then the same could not be said about everything around.

The ocean circulates slowly, perhaps renewing itself every few years. The ice moves too, about 1.6 meters each day. The sheet of ice floats under its own weight, dragging inexorably towards the edge of the ice shelf, where it breaks like massive icebergs on rare occasions. The plate also sinks and rises with the daily tides.

The ice shelf, in addition to melting, can also increase in size. Snowdrifts can form at the top, and water can freeze at the bottom.

Thus, not a single thing in this cold world stands still. An interesting fact: the explorers' camp is located 160 kilometers from the place where Robert Falcon Scott and two members of his team were buried centuries ago during their return from the South Pole. Therefore, it is safe to say that their bodies also move from place to place.

What has the future prepared for us?

If the ocean beneath the ice is warming, what does that mean for the Ross Ice Shelf, the ice sheet it holds back, and future sea levels?

The team collected detailed temperature and salinity data to understand how the ocean circulates inside the cavity. They will be able to use this data for tests and computer simulations, as well as to assess whether the ice is melting at the bottom of the ice shelf or vice versa, the water freezes and the bottom grows.

But even now we can say that compared to the late 70s, the temperature in the ocean has become warmer. In addition, the concentration of salt in the ocean has decreased. It was also found that the bottom of the glacier was covered with crystals. The same crystals can be seen in sea ice that floats next to ice shelves. But this layer of crystals was not as massive as on the Amery Ice Shelf.

None of the above is included in current climate system models. Neither the effect of warm, salty water flowing into the cavity, nor very cold surface water, nor ice crystals affecting heat transfer to ice, or ocean mixing at ice fronts.

It is not entirely clear whether the water below the glacier plays an important role in how the world's oceans work, but what is certain is that it affects the ice shelf.

Summing up, it must be said that ensuring the integrity of ice shelves is our primary task.

"Planets of the solar system" - Mars. The Great Red Spot, a giant hurricane in Jupiter's atmosphere. Mir station. Neptune. The Mir station is located above the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The sun. Mercury and Earth. The Martian year is 687 Earth days long. Pluto. The third largest planet from the Sun in the solar system. Pluto is the smallest of the major planets in the solar system.

"Minor planets" - The Moon's own thermal radiation is negligible. Venus. Atmosphere and water on Mars. Mercury has a magnetic field. The distance of Mercury from the Earth is from 82 to 217 million km. Dimensions, shape and mass of Mercury. Atmosphere and physical fields on Mercury. The highest peak of Venus - Mount Maxwell - height 12 km.

"Giant Planets" - Involving class students in a general conversation. Later they saw that Saturn has not one ring, not three, but more. The brightest B ring is medium and the C ring is very faint. Satellites of Jupiter. Uranus. A bright, very large ring is "put on" on the flattened ball. Pluto has a moon. Jupiter is the largest of all the planets in the solar system.

"Geography Grade 6 Glaciers" - Classification of glaciers. Peroto Moreno Glacier (Argentina). Can glaciers form in our area now? Iceberg Ice Shelf. Mountain glaciers. The entire area from which the river collects water? How is interstratal water formed? Which lake is the largest in area? Monument to those who died as a result of the collapse of the Kolka glacier.

"Formation of planets" - Calcium. Eagle Nebula. The bulk of the protoplanetary disk is leaving the solar system. catastrophic hypotheses. Magnesium. The emergence of the planets. Magnesium silicates, iron and nickel. Let's save the Earth the way we got it! Planet formation. The Horsehead Nebula is part of a dark dust cloud.

"Planet of knowledge textbooks" - "Fine arts", grades 1-4. Teaching materials for elementary school. "Russian language", grades 2-4. Training sheets. cognitive activity. textbooks; workbooks; didactic and methodical aids. Creative tasks. Qualitative assignments. Project activity (grade 2). Unity of approaches to the organization of educational and extracurricular activities.

Fill in the missing words in the text. Urgent! Thanks in advance
Antarctica is the south polar region of the Earth, inside the Antarctic Circle. Antarctica includes the mainland ………………………, the southern margin …………….., ………………………… and …………………………. oceans and islands lying within 50-60 ° south latitude. According to the definition of scientists off the coast of Antarctica, more than 100 thousand swim at the same time ……………………. different size.
Antarctica was formed from the ancient mainland ……………….. . At the base of Antarctica lies …………………………………………………………. The average height of the mainland is …….. meters. The height of the highest mountain range is ……….. m, the deepest depression is ………….. . Volcanic activity has not stopped until now, confirmation of this is ………………………….
There is a lot of ice here - 24 million km3. It is more……. % of all fresh water on Earth that is stored here in a frozen state. Glacier ……………… is the largest and longest ice shelf of our planet. In 2012, Russian scientists at the station ……………… reached the waters of an underground lake closed from the outside world by almost 4 km with a layer of ice.
Antarctica is the most ……………………… of all the continents of the Earth. Most of it lies in ………………………. climatic zone. The lowest temperature on Earth that was recorded at the station ………………. – ……..0. There is no rain in Antarctica: precipitation here falls in the form of ………….
The mainland receives a very large amount of …………………. heat, but the surface of the mainland does not warm up even during the polar day, which lasts in the region of the pole for about six months. Because the ice of Antarctica ………………….. up to …… % of solar radiation, and the mainland does not heat up. And during the polar night it gets very cold. It turns out that in the south polar summer you can not leave the room without sunglasses; skin tans quickly.
Most of Antarctica is icy …………………… .., only life is glimmering off the coast. The organic world of Antarctica is poor, only rare plants: …………, ………………….. and …………………………… inhabit it. The main decoration of the continent is …………………….. . The most common is ……………, and the largest is ……………………………. . In the waters of the seas they live ............. and ……………….
Antarctica does not belong to any state, no one lives there permanently. Nevertheless, 16 countries have founded their own …………………………… here, where various studies of the nature of this continent are being conducted. Employees of polar stations are called …………… .. . Antarctica is a continent of peace and cooperation. Within its limits any military preparations are prohibited. None of the countries can declare it their land. Legally, this is enshrined in an international treaty, which was signed on December 1 ………...

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Antarctica is the south polar region of the Earth, inside the Antarctic Circle. The mainland is part of Antarctica Antarctica southern edge Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans and islands lying within 50-60 ° south latitude. According to scientists, more than 100,000 swim at the same time off the coast of Antarctica. icebergs different size.

Antarctica was formed from an ancient continent Gondwana.. At the base of Antarctica lies ancient Antarctic platform.. The average height of the mainland - 2040. meters. The height of the highest mountain range - Mount Vinson, 5140 m, the deepest depression Bentley(-2555 m). Volcanic activity has not stopped so far, confirmation of this is the active volcano Erebus on the Ross Peninsula.
There is a lot of ice here - 24 million km3. It's over 90 % of all fresh water on Earth that is stored here in a frozen state. Glacier Ross- the largest and longest ice shelf of our planet. In 2012, Russian scientists at the station East reached the waters of the underground lake East closed from the outside world almost 4 km by a layer of ice.

Antarctica is the most cold from all the continents of the earth. Most of it lies in Antarctic climatic zone. The lowest temperature on Earth that was recorded at the station East – -89,2* (10.08.2010: - 93,2*) . It doesn't rain in Antarctica: precipitation here falls in the form of snow.

The mainland receives a very large amount sunny heat, but the surface of the mainland does not warm up even during the polar day, which lasts in the region of the pole for about six months. Because the ice of Antarctica reflects before 90 % solar radiation, and the mainland does not heat up. And during the polar night it gets very cold. It turns out that in the south polar summer you can not leave the room without sunglasses; skin tans quickly.

Most of Antarctica is icy desert, only life glimmers off the coast. The organic world of Antarctica is poor, only rare plants: mosses, lichens, microscopic fungi and algae inhabit it. The main decoration of the continent - penguins. The most common is - little adélie penguin, and the largest emperor penguin weighing up to 50 kg. height 1m. Blue whales, sperm whales, killer whales and plankton live in the waters of the seas.

Antarctica does not belong to any state, no one lives there permanently. However, 16 countries have established their research stations, where various studies of the nature of this continent are being conducted. Employees of polar stations are called polar scientists. Antarctica is a continent of peace and cooperation. Within its limits any military preparations are prohibited. None of the countries can declare it their land. Legally, this is enshrined in an international treaty, which was signed on December 1 1959 of the year.