5 Things You Didn't Know About Antarctica

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• published: 08 Jan 2014
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5 quick facts you might not of known about Antarctica. Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered and was spotted in 1820. The first team to reach the South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to visit Antarctica in 1935 and in January 1979, Emilio Marco Palma became the first child born on the southernmost continent. Antarctica is Earths fifth largest continent, it's covered in ice and is classed as a desert. It owns this classification because Deserts are generally defined as areas that receive less than 10 inches of rain or snow a year. Which puts Antarctica in the desert category. Antarctica holds 90% of the world's ice and if it was to melt away, all of the worlds oceans would rise by 65 metres. This rise would swallow places like London and Venice. most of Denmark and the entire Atlantic seaboard. Florida and the Gulf Coast would require a submarine to visit and San Francisco's hills would become a cluster of islands. Since 1992 it has averaged a net loss of 65 million metric tons of ice a year. Many Antarctic sea creatures have antifreeze in their blood. Creatures such as fish living in the Antarctic waters have a protein in there blood that affects the water molecules so that they cannot freeze. The anti-freeze proteins work better than any man made antifreeze. Penguins are black on top and white on the bottom because when they're cold, they turn there black backs to the sun to generate heat and warm them up. But when they get hot, they turn their white fronts to the sun which reflects heat and cools them down. Images- Antarctica peninsula region- Vincent van zeijst View towards the NNE from Rothera Research station - Vincent Van Zeijst Antarctic Ice Shelf - George's Nijs Cottrell Street closed off by floods - Tony Bryer Antarctic Krill- Uwe Kils Penguin - Ian Duffy Emperor Penguin - Samuel Blanc Antarctic bound- H pled Music- Angevin by Kevin Macleod (Imcomptech)