CHAPTER 3 The Coldest Place on Earth

With all the ice on Antarctica, you would think it must snow there a lot. But Antarctica doesn’t get much snow at all. In fact, Antarctica is considered a desert. We usually think of deserts as places with miles and miles of sand. But a desert is any region that gets very little precipitation. Precipitation is liquid or solid water that falls from the sky as rain, drizzle, snow, hail, or ice crystals. Antarctica is a desert that is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on our planet.

You might also think that this frozen continent would have the same climate all over, but that’s not so. There are three different climate regions: the interior, the coastal areas, and the Antarctica Peninsula.

The interior of the continent is the coldest and the driest of all the regions. This part of Antarctica gets about the same amount of annual precipitation as Death Valley, California.

Sometimes it is too cold to snow here. Tiny ice crystals known as “diamond dust” fall instead. The average year-round temperature at the center of the continent is −58°F. The coldest temperature was recorded by Russian scientists in 1983. They recorded a temperature of −129°F! In comparison, the average winter temperature in Chicago that year was 24°F!

This area of Antarctica also experiences fierce winds. The wind can gust up to one hundred miles per hour. As it blows, it picks up drifting snow and causes blizzards that can last for days.

The coastal areas of Antarctica have warmer temperatures and much more snowfall than the interior. The average temperature in the winter ranges from 5° to 15°F, but it can get as cold as −58°F. The region gets a total of twenty to forty inches of snow every year.

This area might be milder than the interior, but it gets even stronger winds. These icy blasts are called katabatic (say: ka-tuh-BA-tik) winds. They start on the high plateaus in the interior and gain strength along the coasts. The highest wind speeds in Antarctica were clocked at 218 miles per hour at Belgrano II station near the Weddell Sea.

The Antarctic Peninsula has the mildest climate on the continent. The average temperature in the summer is above 32°F. The temperature in the winter rarely falls below 14°F. The average precipitation is fourteen to twenty inches a year. Because of the warmer temperatures, it can fall as rain in the summer and snow in the winter.

Some of the differences in the three climates on the continent also have to do with exactly where Antarctica is on our planet. Antarctica is in the Southern Hemisphere. This means that summer lasts from November to March, and winter lasts from April to October. The seasons are the exact opposite of what they are in the Northern Hemisphere. (Also, there is no spring or fall.)

Antarctica is also affected by the way our planet tilts as it turns on its axis. During the summer months, Antarctica is on the side of Earth that is tilted toward the sun. It has constant sunshine during this time. In the winter, Antarctica is on the side of Earth that is tilted away from the sun. The continent has constant darkness during this time.

The nighttime sky above Antarctica puts on a real show. The Milky Way and the planet Jupiter can be seen overhead. The Southern Hemisphere constellations, the Southern Cross and Chamaeleon, cross the nighttime sky at different times of the year.

But the greatest light show is the southern lights. Most people have heard of the northern lights (aurora borealis) that appear in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere. But there are also southern lights (aurora australis) in the Southern Hemisphere.

In the north, long ago, people thought these mysterious displays were signs from the gods. But we now know that these amazing displays of light are caused by electrically charged particles that are given off by the sun. As these particles pass by our planet, they are attracted to the two magnetic poles. These particles react with elements in our atmosphere as they get closer. This reaction creates the dazzling lights that can range from orange and green to purple and red.

But the best places to see the southern lights in Antarctica are in some of the hardest places to get to and at the coldest time of the year. So not many people get to witness the spectacular light show there.