Antarctica $1.69 AUD
Category: Geography & Nature JNR
Antarctica is the fifth biggest continent on Earth. It is also the coldest. The sun shines for only half of the year and stays under the horizon for the other half. Early explorers of Antarctica described it as a mysterious, lonely place. But they also described it as a desert. And a desert it is! For it receives only 50 millimetres of rain and snow per year. That is less precipitation than the Sahara Desert! So, believe it or not, Antarctica is also the driest continent on Earth.
If you tried to cross Antarctica, you would see nothing but mountains, ice and snow, which doesn’t evaporate here. The Transantarctic Mountains are more than 5000 metres high. But much of their height is buried in ice 2000 to 5000 metres thick! More than 99 percent of Antarctica is covered with enourmous ice sheets. These sheets are thousands of years old and span an area that is larger than Australia. They contain 90% of the planet’s ice and contain 70% of its fresh water! And the weight of these ice sheets is so heavy that if they melted, Antarctica would spring up 500 metres and raise the world’s oceans by 60 metres. This would destroy most of the world’s coastal cities, such as New York.
