Antarctica

Antarctica is the continent around the South Pole. It is covered by an ice sheet that is on average around two kilometres thick and holds about 70% of the world's fresh water. It is also the largest desert on Earth, because a desert is defined by how little precipitation it gets, not by how hot or sandy it is, and the interior of Antarctica receives very little snow each year.^[1] It is the only desert in which it is impossible to find sand and very easy to find water.

Cold

The lowest air temperature ever measured at a weather station, −89.2 °C, was recorded at Vostok Station in Antarctica in July 1983. Satellites have since detected even lower surface temperatures in the high interior. Antarctica is therefore at the top of the list of things that are cold, which is the only list on WinkyPedia it leads by a margin of several dozen degrees.^[2]

People

Antarctica has no permanent residents. A few thousand scientists and support staff live at research stations in summer, and far fewer in winter. Because the lines of longitude meet at the pole, every time zone meets there too, and research stations generally just use the time of the country that supplies them, or whichever is most convenient. At the South Pole it is, in a sense, every time at once.

• Ice: ~2 km thick on average.
• Fresh water: ~70% of the world's.
• Precipitation: very little (desert).
• Residents: none permanent; some penguins.

See also

• Penguin – a resident
• Ice – most of it
• List of things that are cold – which it leads

References

1. Floe, A. (1997). A Desert, Technically. Pole Press.
2. Vostok, V. (1983/2009). “−89.2”. Cold Records 1: 1.
3. Meridian, S. (2012). Every Time Zone at Once. Longitude Books.