Good Weather

Antarctica isn't all blizzards and sub zero temperatures.

Blue skies and blue seas.... Not exactly what I was expecting

The whales of Antarctica

There are 15 types of whales that visit Antarctica

Gentoo penguins

Gentoo Penguins
The ones with bushy tails.

Photo by Liam Quinn

The post office of Antarctica

At port Lockroy on Goudier Island on the Antarctic Peninsular

is a Royal Mail post office

Post card time!!!

Photo by Dr Ivanov

The midnight sun

Its midnight
And the sun is out?

Adelie penguins

Adelie Penguins

The tuxedo one

Photo by Chadica

What grows in a frozen desert?

Can anything grow in a frozen desert?

No soil

No rain

No sunlight for several months a year

Sub zero conditions nearly all year round

And yet....

ICE wonderful ICE

Ice.

There is a lot of it in Antarctica.

But did you know that not all ice is the same? That there are many different types of ice.

"Grotto in an iceberg" by National Library of New Zeland photographed during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913, 5 Jan 1911. Photographer: Herbert Ponting, Alexander Turnbull Library

Who owns Antarctica

Antarctica isn't owned by anyone.

There has never been a war on Antarctica

It is governed under a treaty which manages its use so that it is not exploited.

Penguins

Penguins are aquatic flightless birds.

There are 17 recognised species of penguin.

Not all species of penguin live near Antarctica, although they all do live in the Southern Hemisphere. But they are the most common bird on Antarctica, living in huge colonies.

Surviving Antarctica

Antarctica is one the harshest environments on the planet.

What humans eat effects how well they cope with the environment.

The food store at Rothera Research Base

Felicity Aston

Felicity Aston is a polar adventurer and climate scientist. 

She is the first person to manually ski 1084 miles across Antarctica, coast to coast via the south pole, and she did it completely alone.

Research Stations- Rothera

Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island on the Antarctic Peninsular studies marine and terrestrial biology, geology, glaciology, meteorology and upper atmospherics.

It is also the capital of the British Antarctic Territory and the logistics centre for British Antarctic Survey.

Mountains of Antartica

Antarctica just doesn't have a couple of mountains, it has thousands of mountains, and 42 mountain ranges.

Some of them have only recently been found. 

Most of them have never been climbed.

Research stations- Halley

The Halley Research Station is a British research base run by the British Antarctic Survey. It mainly researches atmospheric sciences, but also survey, geology and glaciology. It was founded in 1957. 

Youngest person to ski to the South Pole

Lewis Clarke was 16 years old when he skied to the South Pole. The year 11 student from Bristol spent 48 days skiing 702 miles along the Hercules Inlet route.

On the expedition, he only had one day off. Skiing 8 to 9 hours a day, he covered about 18 miles a day, battling against gale force winds and temperatures as low as -40.

After his 7 week expedition, he literally went straight into his GCSE mocks and then into the real exams. (in August he got his results – 7 A*s and 3 As) He actually took his revision with him to Antarctica!

And this wasn't even the first time he had broken a world record (and still holds the record). When he was 12, Lewis and a team of friends became the youngest team to ever swim the Channel in relay.

His blog for his record breaking expedition can be found at https://youngesttosouthpole.wordpress.com

Beneath the ice

This radar image taken in 1998 shows just how much ice is covering Antarctica. Its showing a slice of 1.9 miles of ice over mountains spanning a few hundred kilometres either side of the South Pole. (The horizontal scale differs from the vertical.... those Trans-Antarctic Mountains are not that steep!)

Over many years, snow that fell at the surface has been compressed and transformed into successive layers of ice. The process continues and layers become further compressed under the tremendous weight of the ice sheet. The ice that makes up a single layer is a uniform age and contains information about the composition of the atmosphere at the time that the snow initially fell.

Radar instruments on aircraft can detect these layers by transmitting microwave signals and recording the magnitude of the echoes returned to the instrument. The method works because the strength of the echo varies depending on factors such as density and the amount of impurities in each layer.

'What Lies Below' NASA Earth Observatory

98% of the continent is covered in ice that is miles deep. In fact, 70% of the world fresh water is sitting frozen on Antarctica. For a desert, that is a lot of frozen water. And to top it off, all that ice is moving very very slowly. (Another topic for another time I think)

Want to read more about Antarctic ice thickness, you cant go wrong with the snappily titled paper 'Bedmap2: improved ice bed, surface and thickness datasets for Antarctica' published in 2013.

Cycling to the South Pole

On the 27th December 2013, Maria Leijerstam became the first person in the world to cycle from the edge of the Antarctic continent to the South Pole. She also set the new World Record for the fastest human powered coast to pole traverse, completing her journey in 10 days, 14hrs and 56 minutes.

Maria, who is from Wales, cycled every day for 10 to 17 hours without a rest day. She reached 2941m when crossing the Trans-Antarctic Mountain range on the Leverett Glacier.

The Polar Cycle she used was specially designed and is the only one in the world.

To learn more about the White Ice Cycle expedition, visit http://www.whiteicecycle.com.

The shapes of snowflakes

Did you know that there are a staggering 121 categories of snowflake? 

Antarctica

Antarctica is Earths last great wilderness.

Its a huge mountainous continent. A desert that is locked in ice. Its so cold, that it almost never snows.

It was only discovered 195 years ago in 1820

Although the climate is incredibly harsh, Antarctica has a wide biodiversity, including 235 different types of marine organisms. However, there are only 2 types of flowering plant that grow there.

Antarctic has no government and no economic activity Many countries use Antarctica, but are governed by a treaty to ensure its never destroyed.