The fifth-largest continent on earth with no native human habitation, Antarctica is a cold and inhospitable landscape
By Susanna Gough
Dark for half the year, colder than anywhere else on earth, and incapable of supporting plant life, this Antarctica is truly inhospitable and has no native human inhabitants. It is a polar desert, with its interior regions receiving just 50-100mm of water per year in the form of snow. The coldest temperature on earth ever recorded was a satellite reading taken from Antarctica in 2010, measuring a low of -93.2°c. Antarctica also experiences fierce wind. Known as Katabatic winds, these gales are created when cold, dense air flows down mountain sides. Unpredictable and turbulent, they create infamous, impenetrable blizzards when reaching high velocities. Speeds of up to 350 km/h are not uncommon.
Physical Geography
The continent is dominated by the vast Antarctic ice sheet. At 1,800 metres thick, the ice sheet holds 60 per cent of the world’s total fresh water. Every winter, the mass grows by around 16 million square kilometres before melting again in summer. Variation between the two seasons mainly occurs at the ice shelf edges, although the glacial interior shifts in stately procession at a rate of between ten and one thousand metres per year.
Antarctica’s characteristic shape is carved out by the Ross and Weddell Seas, which flank the Antarctic peninsula, reaching out towards Argentina. This section, with its irregular coastline and archipelago, is known as Lesser Antarctica and is composed of relatively young sedimentary and volcanic rock. Its adjacent single landmass is Greater Antarctica, which is made up of older igneous and metamorphic rock.
However, this is not where Antarctica ends. The Antarctic convergence is an uneven latitudinal line roughly 66.3 degrees south of the equator, where cold Antarctic waters meet their warmer counterparts. Within this zone, surrounding the continental mass, are many island territories, such as UK-owned lands, including South Georgia, and many others claimed by different nations such as Bouvet Island of Norway. Volcanic activity is prevalent on these islands, with Lesser Antarctica forming part of the Pacific ‘ring of fire’.
Despite its intimidating hostility, Antarctica is crucial to the health of our planet. One of earth’s vital signs is its heat balance, or ‘energy budget’. The flow of incoming solar energy must be radiated equally back out to space, to keep earth’s temperatures stable. As we know all too well, the greenhouse effect, caused predominantly by the excessive burning of fossil fuels, throws off this balance, exacerbating global warming. Antarctica, with its vast ice sheet, reflects an equally vast portion of solar radiation away form the planet’s surface. It is indispensable to maintaining equilibrium.
The cold seas that surround Antarctica are very dense, to the point that they push down against the ocean floor. This forces warmer waters upwards, in a process known as ‘upwelling’. In the ‘ocean conveyor belt’, the flows of water around the world, upwelling is a critical force. Important nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous are also shifted in this process, sustaining marine life everywhere.
Wildlife
Antarctica’s seas are its most lively zone. Upwelling causes phytoplankton and algae to bloom exuberantly, and krill come together in vast congregations. These schools provide food for seven species of baleen whales, which are characterised by their hairlike mouth filters, perfect for gulping down krill. Whales were excessively slaughtered in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now, they are a universally protected species, and in a rare spell of good climate news, a British Antarctic Survey expedition found in 2020 that there were ‘unprecedented’ high numbers of blue whales off the coast of South Georgia Island.
We have a cultural fascination with penguins, evident in the international success of the 2005 avian epic, The March of the Penguins. Their tough living conditions, heroic journeys to feed their young, instinct to mate for life, and adorable babies are easily romanticised, as we compare their close communities to our own human societies. Beyond this emotive storytelling, penguins are perfectly adapted to their polar habitats. Emperor penguins dive the deepest and longest of any bird, and are optimally streamlined in the water. They have dense feathers, plentiful fat reserves, and use efficient huddling techniques to stay warm in the biting Antarctic cold.
History and Political Geography
Our fascination is not new. After Captain James Cook circumnavigated the continent in the 1770s, like many other continents in the period, Antarctica was speculated over – surveyed for what it could do for humans. Fuelled by a colonial cocktail of financial greed and swollen national pride, states swarmed to lay claim to slices of the territory and take advantage of lucrative opportunities such as whaling.
Then, in what is known as the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration, Britain and Norway, represented by Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, went head to head to reach the pole, intrepidly foregoing safety for scientific progress, or perhaps more accurately, to win the race. Amundsen, on 15 December 1911, emerged victorious, using dog sledges to traverse the ice. Scott’s party, on the other hand, relied almost exclusively on manpower. They reached the pole, but died on the treacherous return journey. A member of the team, Captain Lawrence Oates, walked out of his tent one day, uttering his ominous final words: ‘I am just going outside and may be some time’.
In contrast, the Antarctic has since become a place of international collaboration rather than fierce competition. In 1961, twelve participating nations, including the frosty Soviet Union and United States, signed the Antarctic Treaty, which established that the region would remain politically neutral, that new claims on the territory could not be made, and that research could only be done for peaceful purposes. Since then, forty-seven nations have joined the agreement.
The British Antarctic Survey describes Antarctica as a ‘continent for science’. In summer, around 5,000 scientists work on cutting-edge research, living in outposts. The largest, McMurdo research station, is capable of supporting 1,250 residents, and with eighty buildings, functions like a town. Nations frequently collaborate on projects. Not only is Antarctica itself directly studied, like in the use of advanced radar technology to make surveys of its topography, but it is also a brilliant place to observe outer space. The Centre for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica (CARA) is the joint project of the US and Germany. NASA also has a base on the continent – more meteorites are found in Antarctica than anywhere else, often preserved in the ice.
Tourism
It isn’t just scientists who visit the earth’s coldest continent. Increasingly, globetrotters and thrill seekers alike have been taking advantage of a small yet growing tourist industry. Lonely Planet has an Antarctica guide, and frequently publishes articles advertising the ways that you too can experience this unique place. They estimate that between 50,000 and 75,000 tourists visit each year. In 2009, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting discussed the impact of tourism on the environment, and established careful practices. With the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, regulations and restrictions were placed on the number of tourists at any given time, wildlife watching, and the nature of tourist activities. In 2017, the International Maritime Organization established a Polar Code which limited very large cruise vessels from entering Antarctic waters.
Nevertheless, wanderlust keeps people, especially those with excessive disposable funds, returning to Antarctica. The Transantarctic Mountains are a 3,400km long mountain range dividing the continent into eastern and western regions. Many of the peaks loom higher than four thousand metres tall, their emergent heads being some of the only land in Antarctica not covered in snow and ice. The majority have not been climbed due to intense weather conditions and the meticulous planning necessary. For many mountaineers however, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward, and the American Alpine Club declared that the Antarctic is ‘the mountaineering destination of the twenty-first century’, because of this allure of unchartered territory.
Climate Change
National Geographic claims that Antarctica is a ‘symbol of climate change’. Its charismatic fauna, scientific population at the front line of environmental research, and poignant melting ice, make it a recurring tool to discuss the climate crisis. Since 1960, average temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by six degrees. The Larsen Ice Shelf mostly disintegrated between January 1995 and March 2002. Finally, almost 90% of Antarctica’s glaciers have retreated since the 1960s. Antarctica holds vital global water stores, which bear the threefold responsibility of reflecting solar energy back into the atmosphere, storing carbon, and holding water which would otherwise raise sea levels disastrously. It is imperative that the ice caps are protected, or we face one of the dire ‘tipping points’ of the climate crisis.
