Compared to the Arctic, Antarctica is responding less rapidly to climate change. Water’s melting point, 32°F, is a critical threshold for rapid change in polar regions, and only a small fraction of the snow on Antarctica’s miles-high ice sheet reaches that temperature in summer. Antarctica is also surrounded by a vast ocean, and it’s buffered by winds and weather patterns that tend to isolate it from large warm-air intrusions. Still, the frozen continent has become warmer, and has lost billions of tons of ice as a result. Its future responses to warming air and ocean could have worldwide consequences.
Though it’s about as far from the equator as the Arctic, and though it’s also largely frozen, Antarctica is in many ways the Arctic’s opposite. The Arctic is an ice-covered ocean basin surrounded by landmasses; Antarctica is a continent surrounded by a vast ocean. Roughly the size of the contiguous United States and Mexico combined, Antarctica extends from 60°S to the South Pole. Most of the continent lies within the Antarctic Circle, 66°33'39" south of the Equator. Geographers divide the continent into three regions: East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula.
Separating East and West Antarctica, the Transantarctic Mountains include peaks over 14,000 feet, and an even higher peak—16,000+-foot Mt Vinson—rises near the Antarctic Peninsula. But mountains aren’t what make Antarctica the highest-elevation continent on Earth. Ice is. Thanks to thick ice, Antarctic elevation averages more than 6,000 feet (more than a mile above sea level). The very highest parts of the ice sheet, near the center of East Antarctica, rival the height of its tallest mountains, at nearly 13,500 feet.
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Image via NOAA.