60 Fun Facts About Antarctica

Antarctica ranks where among the continents by area?

At 14.2 million square kilometres it is about 40% bigger than Europe and almost twice the size of Australia.

What is the average thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet?

Roughly 70% of the world's fresh water is locked up in it.

If all of Antarctica's ice melted, by roughly how much would global sea levels rise?

The unstable West Antarctic ice sheet is the biggest source of uncertainty in century-scale projections.

What is the lowest natural air temperature ever recorded on Earth, at a Russian Antarctic base in 1983?

It was recorded at Vostok Station, which sits above the largest subglacial lake in the world.

Besides being the coldest and windiest continent, Antarctica also holds which two records?

Much of the interior is above 3,000 metres, which is one reason it is colder than the Arctic.

What is the highest peak in Antarctica?

It rises to 4,892 metres in the Ellsworth Mountains and was not climbed until 1966.

Which volcano on Ross Island is the southernmost active volcano on Earth?

It erupts around 10 times a day and was first climbed by Edgeworth David's party in 1908.

Which mountain range divides East Antarctica from West Antarctica?

They stretch from Victoria Land to the Ross Sea; Shackleton's party crossed them via the Beardmore Glacier in 1908.

The largest ice shelf in Antarctica, about the size of France, is named after which explorer?

It covers roughly 500,000 square kilometres and is about 800 km across.

Blood Falls, a red outflow from the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys, gets its colour from what?

Hypersaline, iron-rich water seeps out of fissures in the ice and rusts on contact with air.

Antarctica was once part of which supercontinent, which began breaking up around 183 million years ago?

For much of its history the continent was forested and even had dinosaurs such as Cryolophosaurus.

Which is the largest purely terrestrial animal native to Antarctica?

Belgica antarctica reaches all of 6 mm long; penguins and seals spend much of their lives at sea.

Which small crustacean is the keystone species of the Southern Ocean food web?

Whales, seals, squid, penguins and albatrosses all depend on it, and overfishing has forced catch limits.

Which is the only Antarctic seabird that breeds through the polar winter?

The male incubates the single egg for over two months while the female feeds at sea.

Among penguins breeding in the Antarctic winter, which parent incubates the egg while the other goes to sea?

Colonies can hold several thousand birds after treks of 50-120 km across the ice.

Which pinniped is the apex predator of the Antarctic ecosystem?

Fur seals, by contrast, were hunted almost to extinction for their pelts in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In which year did Captain James Cook's ships first cross the Antarctic Circle?

He came within about 120 km of the coast before field ice turned him back.

Which country sent the Bellingshausen–Lazarev expedition credited with first sighting an Antarctic ice shelf in 1820?

Their sighting came three days before Britain's Edward Bransfield saw land and ten months before American sealer Nathaniel Palmer.

The first confirmed landing on the Antarctic mainland was made in 1895 by a team from which country?

The whaling ship Antarctic reached Cape Adare; an earlier 1821 landing by the American sealer John Davis is disputed.

Who led the first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole, on 14 December 1911?

His party travelled from the ship Fram via the Bay of Whales and the Axel Heiberg Glacier.

By how many days did Amundsen beat Scott's Terra Nova party to the Pole?

Scott's five-man party reached it on 17 January 1912 and all died on the return journey.

Which member of Scott's polar party walked into a blizzard to his death on his 32nd birthday?

Gangrene and frostbite had crippled him; the sacrifice did not save the remaining three.

Who was first to reach the south magnetic pole, in 1909?

They were part of Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, whose members also made the first ascent of Mount Erebus.

Shackleton's ship Endurance was crushed by ice in which sea in 1915?

The 28 men camped on the drifting ice for months before rowing to Elephant Island.

Roughly how far did Shackleton and five men sail in the lifeboat James Caird to reach South Georgia?

Every man left behind on Elephant Island was eventually rescued alive.

Which American explorer led four Antarctic expeditions from the 1920s to 1940s and introduced tractors there?

He is credited with surveying more of the continent than any other explorer, and a 1930 film about him won an Oscar.

Who became the first woman to set foot on the Antarctic mainland, in 1937?

Caroline Mikkelsen had landed on an Antarctic island two years earlier.

After Scott in 1912, nobody stood at the South Pole again until 1956, when a US Navy group arrived how?

Rear Admiral George Dufek's plane landed there on 31 October 1956; six women were flown in as a publicity stunt in 1969.

What helped Børge Ousland become the first person to cross Antarctica alone coast to coast in 1996-97?

He also holds the record for the fastest unsupported journey to the Pole, 34 days.

In which year was the Antarctic Treaty opened for signature?

It came into force in 1961 and was the first arms-control agreement of the Cold War.

How many countries originally signed the Antarctic Treaty?

They were the nations active there during the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year; 42 more have since joined.

For the Antarctic Treaty, Antarctica is defined as all land and ice shelves south of which latitude?

The treaty designates the continent a scientific preserve and bans military activity.

How many countries claim sovereignty over parts of Antarctica?

The Argentine, British and Chilean claims overlap; the US and Russia reserve the right to claim.

Antarctica Day, one of the continent's two main holidays, falls on 1 December to mark what?

The other holiday is Midwinter Day on the June solstice.

About how many people live at Antarctic research stations in summer?

The figure drops to about 1,000 in winter.

Which is the largest research base in Antarctica, able to house more than 1,000 people?

It has hosted Icestock, the world's southernmost music festival, since 1989.

Emilio Marcos Palma, the first person born on the Antarctic mainland, was born in 1978 at which country's base?

Esperanza Base is one of only two all-civilian settlements on the continent.

British scientists discovered the ozone hole in 1985 using data from which station?

The hole was largest in September 2006 and is expected to heal by the 2060s thanks to the Montreal Protocol.

The 1987 international agreement that restricted ozone-depleting chemicals is known as what?

The Madrid Protocol, in force from 1998, is the separate treaty banning Antarctic mining.

The 1998 protocol restricting Antarctic mining is due for review in which year?

Coal, iron, platinum and gold have all been found, but not in quantities worth extracting.

Overland sightseeing flights from Australia and New Zealand stopped after a 1979 disaster in which an Air New Zealand plane crashed into what?

All 257 people aboard died; Qantas only resumed overflights in the mid-1990s.

The name Antarctica was adopted in the 1890s and is credited to a cartographer from which country?

John George Bartholomew chose it after Australia took the name Terra Australis; Ultima and Antipodea had also been suggested.

The word "antarctic" ultimately means what?

It comes via Middle French from the Latin antarcticus; Aristotle wrote of an "Antarctic region" in his Meteorology.

Why does the South Pole receive more solar radiation than the equator at the height of summer?

Weather fronts rarely reach the interior, leaving it cold, dry and clear.

What is the name for the storm-force air currents that pour off the polar plateau to the coast?

In blue-ice areas the wind and sublimation strip away more snow than falls.

The largest neutrino detector in the world, IceCube, is located at which base?

Astrophysicists there also study the cosmic microwave background; the station sits at 2,835 metres above sea level.

Why is Antarctica an especially good place to hunt for meteorites?

The first, the Adelie Land meteorite, was found in 1912; some Antarctic finds have come from the Moon and Mars.

The largest subglacial body of water in the world lies beneath which Antarctic base?

Its water is thought to be slowly replaced by melting and freezing about every 13,000 years.

How many tourists visited the Antarctic region in the 2019-2020 season?

Around 18,500 of them stayed on their cruise ships and never set foot ashore.

The Patagonian toothfish, illegally fished in Antarctic waters, is sold in the US under what name?

Krill overfishing prompted the first Antarctic fishing rules in 1980.

The Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, ranks where in size among the five oceans?

Only the Arctic Ocean is smaller.

What is the name of Antarctica's longest river?

Yes, Antarctica has rivers; the continent as a whole covers more than 14.2 million sq km, about the surface area of Pluto.

Roughly how many times a day does Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano, erupt?

Ash from its eruptions has turned up 300 km from the crater, and many more volcanoes are thought to lie hidden beneath the ice sheet.

Dome Argus, the highest ice feature in Antarctica, rises to roughly what elevation?

It is among the coldest and driest places on Earth, with temperatures down to -90 °C and just 1-3 cm of precipitation a year.

Which strait opened around 30 million years ago, creating the current that isolated the continent?

The resulting Antarctic Circumpolar Current, plus falling CO2, let permanent ice caps form and spread over the forests that once covered the continent.

How many species of flowering plant grow in Antarctica, all on the Antarctic Peninsula?

They are Antarctic hair grass, Antarctic pearlwort and the non-native annual bluegrass; mosses and liverworts make up most of the rest of the flora.

Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen, the first child born in the southern polar region in 1913, was born where?

She was Norwegian, like most of the whalers who worked the island until the whaling era ended in 1966.

Which country's Princess Elisabeth station was the first Antarctic research base to be carbon-neutral?

There are more than 70 permanent and seasonal stations on the continent, and the British Antarctic Survey has one that is completely portable.

Since 1989 McMurdo Station has hosted Icestock, the world's southernmost what?

Everyone involved, from performers to audience, is staff at McMurdo or nearby Scott Base; the continent also holds an annual 48-hour winter film festival.

Which 1971 British comedy starring John Hurt was shot partly on the continent?

Other fiction films shot there include the 1983 Japanese drama Antarctica, scored by Vangelis, and the 2012 horror South of Sanity.