Physical map of Antarctica. Antarctica on the map

Antarctica on the map

Antarctica is an icy continent in the very south of the planet. The sixth continent was discovered by Russian navigators Thaddeus Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev in 1820. According to the international convention on Antarctica, this territory does not belong to any country in the world.

There is no permanent population here, but active scientific activity is carried out. Seven out of 45 Antarctic stations belong to Russia. Antarctica has huge reserves of fresh water (about 80% of all fresh water on Earth), and there are also significant mineral reserves.

Map of Antarctica

Despite the huge natural wealth, the entire world community recognizes the inadmissibility of intrusion into the fragile world of Antarctic nature, now only the tourism business is actively developing here. About six thousand tourists visit these harsh places every year! You and I can try to understand what attracts tourists to this distant continent so much by taking an online walk through this amazing land (see “Antarctica walk” and “Antarctica online“).

In recent years, interesting studies of the relief of the mainland have been carried out and new maps have been compiled. The study of the topography under the Antarctic ice sheet is critical to understanding the dynamics of the ice sheet, its thickness, and the impact on the surrounding ocean and global climate.

satellite antarctica

Influencing ocean currents and sea level rise, this continent plays a huge role in the Earth's climate system. Using various methods, researchers are trying to predict how Antarctica will react to climate change.

Information about the thickness of the ice and the structure of the mainland was limited. Now, thanks to work done by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), scientists have a new detailed map of the continent. The video will tell us how the work on compiling the map was carried out:

Antarctica is an icy continent in the very south of the planet. The sixth continent was discovered by Russian navigators Thaddeus Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev in 1820.

According to the international convention on Antarctica, this territory does not belong to any country in the world.

There is no permanent population here, but active scientific activity is carried out. Seven out of 45 Antarctic stations belong to Russia. Antarctica has huge reserves of fresh water (about 80% of all fresh water on Earth), and there are also significant mineral reserves.

Map of Antarctica

Despite the huge natural wealth, the entire world community recognizes the inadmissibility of intrusion into the fragile world of Antarctic nature, now only the tourism business is actively developing here. About six thousand tourists visit these harsh places every year! You and I can try to understand what attracts tourists to this distant continent so much by taking an online walk through this amazing land (see “Antarctica walk” and “Antarctica online“).

In recent years, interesting studies of the relief of the mainland have been carried out and new maps have been compiled. The study of the topography under the Antarctic ice sheet is critical to understanding the dynamics of the ice sheet, its thickness, and the impact on the surrounding ocean and global climate.

satellite antarctica

Influencing ocean currents and sea level rise, this continent plays a huge role in the Earth's climate system. Using various methods, researchers are trying to predict how Antarctica will react to climate change.

Information about the thickness of the ice and the structure of the mainland was limited. Now, thanks to work done by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), scientists have a new detailed map of the continent. The video will tell us how the work on compiling the map was carried out:

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Antarctica: description, photo, where it is on the map, how to get

Antarctica- the southernmost, and at the same time the coldest continent on Earth, washed by the waters of the Southern Ocean. Near the mainland there are a number of adjacent islands. Antarctica was the last continent discovered by scientists. Today, tours to this glacial continent are possible from South America and New Zealand. It is included in the 1000 best places in the world according to our website.

The total area of ​​the continent exceeds 14 million km², and its ice cover makes up more than 80% of all fresh water on our planet. The study of glaciers has become a special field of science called "glaciology". For centuries, scientists could not get to the interior of Antarctica, as it was blocked by ice shelves. So, in the 18th century, the English navigator J. Cook, setting off in search of the last continent, crossed the line of the Antarctic Circle, but never found it.

F. Bellingshausen and M. Lazarev are considered to be the discoverers of the mainland. It was these Russian travelers who in 1820 managed to swim up to the eternal glaciers of Antarctica. The Norwegian polar explorer R. Amundsen made his way deep into the mainland already in the 20th century. Continuous exploration on the continent began in the 1950s. Currently, for all inquisitive tourists, excursions are conducted on board the expedition liner.

Such excursions provide an opportunity to admire the majestic sheer ice floes, which in some places reach 180 meters in height. Some of these hulks are as big as entire states. Icebergs often form on their basis. One of the most unique features in the Southern Ocean is the Ross Ice Shelf. It has long been the hallmark of Antarctica.

Its area is more than 470 thousand km².

This giant object was discovered by the English explorer J. Ross, after whom it got its name. Today, interested tourists have the opportunity to get to the glacier with transparent blue walls by helicopter flight. Eyewitnesses claim that the spectacle is fantastic.

Off the western shores of the mainland, there is another picturesque hulk - the Ronne-Filchner glacier. The easiest way to get to it is from the city of Ushuaia in Argentina. It is said that once every 15 years an iceberg breaks off from the glacier and for the sake of this spectacle it is worth visiting an Antarctic cruise. And, of course, many people want to visit the so-called "capital" of Antarctica - on the McMurdo Ice Shelf. It is home to over 100 buildings and a major research station.

Photo attraction: Antarctica

Antarctica on the map:

Antarctica is the main polar region of the planet, which includes the mainland Antarctica, as well as other islands and seas.

Axis has already been over 200 years of this Suvorian region to drive mandrivniks and dosledniks to oneself. James Cook, having risen in price with the polar seas in 1774, having built only heaps of sea criga on his way. Without watering the land, the great navigator categorically declared that there was no pivdenny mainland. Since then, perhaps, no one has tried to make jokes.

The last significant successes in the passage to Antarctica were reached by the expeditions of the Englishmen William Smith and Edward Brandswilde. The Russians Fadey Bellingshausen and Mikhailo Lazarev are respected as the pioneers of the mainland, as if by their expedition of 1820 they brought the foundation of the mainland to the rock, they marked out the boundary of the special climate.

The next seventy fates of the mainland rose from the sea - too soon to be suvorim and impregnable, they took care of it. Lesser in 1895 by the Norwegians L. Christensen and K. Borchgrevink mainland stage The legacy of Antarctica - many people visited the shores of the continent and chose the first collection of not rich Antarctic flora. In the XX century, expeditions to Antarctica become regular - Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Japan send their expeditions there.

Under the root of the Pivdenny Pole, the baby was born in 1911. Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who outperformed his competitor English Robert Scott for a month.

Antarctica - the mainland at Pivdenniy pivkul, lie near the pivdenny geographic pole. The area with shelf ice floes and islands in the middle is 14,100 yew. km2.

Antarctica is surrounded by three oceans: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific. Inland seas Antarctica, obviously, can not, because 99% of its territory is covered by ice floes.

The volume of ice is 24.9 million km3 - over 80% of the volume of fresh water on the planet.

Antarctica is the largest continent on the planet. The ice curve, which has settled here about 20 million years ago, in some places rises to a height of 4,800 m. indigenous that upper ice age.

The average height of the mainland is more than 2,000 m (the highest in the middle of other continents), while the part of the plain arid part of Antarctica has fallen under the tovshey ice and is lower than the sea level. The western part is cut off by ridges, one of which is crowned by the wild volcano Erebus. Transantarctic mountains stretch across the mainland. The best point of the mainland is located on the Vinson massif (5,140 m). The ice-buildings of Antarctica are steadily collapsing. On the edges of the mainland, the ice rises, appeasing icebergs.

In Antarctica, a rich brown copalin was found (kam'yan vugillya, ore deposits, chromium, nickel, gold). That z looking at the severity of the climate and the unsafe destruction of the ecologically equal to the unique region of the planet, the growth of genera was recognized as invisible and not social.

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Lithospheric catastrophe and ancient maps of Antarctica

Map of Piri Reis 1513


In 1929, a map was discovered in the ancient imperial palace in Constantinople that excited many. It was drawn on parchment and dated 919 according to the Muslim calendar, which corresponded to 1513 according to the Christian calendar. It was signed by Piri ibn Haji Mamed, admiral of the Turkish fleet, now known as Piri Reis.



Lithospheric catastrophe and ancient maps of Antarctica. At one time, Piri Reis made other interesting statements about the sources from which he drew information. He used about twenty maps, mostly from the time of Alexander the Great, as well as maps compiled on a strict mathematical basis, scientists who studied his map, discovered in the 1930s, could not take these admissions with confidence. But now their truth is being revealed.


After some time, public attention faded to the map, and scientists rejected it as an analogue of the “Columbus map”. She was not heard from until 1956, when in Washington, as a result of a happy accident, interest in her flared up again. A Turkish naval officer presented the maps as a gift to the US Marine Hydrographic Office.


The map was then sent to M. I. Walters, the cartographer of the naval headquarters.


It so happened that Walters gave the map to his friend, a specialist in ancient cartography and the initiator of new scientific directions at the junction with archeology. It was Captain Arlington H. Mallery. After a brilliant career as an engineer, nautical specialist, archaeologist and writer, he devoted a number of years to the study of ancient maps, especially the Viking maps of North America and Greenland. Taking the map home, he came to curious conclusions. In his opinion, its southern part reflected the bays and islands of the Antarctic coast, or rather the Queen Maud Land, now hidden under ice. Thus, someone has already mapped these areas when they were free of ice cover.


These claims were so incredible that they could not be taken seriously by most professional geographers, although Walters himself felt that Mallery must be right.


Neither medieval masters nor famous ancient Greek geographers could draw such maps. Their characteristics indicate an origin from a culture with a higher level of technology than that achieved in the Middle Ages or ancient times.



According to Piri Reis himself, it was a map of the “seven seas” and included Africa and Asia, as well as the northern part, in addition to the surviving piece.


It turned out that the position of some points on the Piri Reis map was very accurate, while others were not strictly fixed. Gradually we understood the reason for such inaccuracies. It turned out that this map was compiled from smaller maps of individual areas (probably drawn at different times and by different people), and errors accumulated as it was created.


Component maps that came from ancient times were more accurate and reliable than later images of the earth's surface. And this speaks of the decline of science, from ancient times to modern history.


The longitude and latitude of the coastline is determined quite accurately. This is also true for the North Atlantic islands, with the exception of Madeira. The accuracy of the longitude of the African coast, where it is greatest, can be explained by our assumption of the center and radius of the projection, but with some adjustments.


It can be seen from the portolan with a modern coordinate grid that the coasts separated by the Atlantic have approximately correct corresponding values ​​of longitude relative to the projection center on the meridian of Alexandria. This leads to the belief that the first compiler must have determined the correct longitude over the entire space from the Alexandrian meridian to Brazil itself.


It is also important that most of the islands are located on the true longitude.


The exact location of the islands suggests that they were already on the ancient map used by Piri Reis.


Piri Reis, in all likelihood, had ancient maps in his possession while in Constantinople, and it is quite possible that some of them came to the West long before him.


In 1204, the Venetian fleet, on a crusade to the Holy Land, attacked and captured Constantinople. And for 60 years after that, Italian merchants had the opportunity to redraw maps from the Byzantine collection.



We have reason to believe that a good map of the St. Lawrence River was available to Europeans before the voyage of Columbus in 1492. It even shows the islands near the mouth. The compiler of this map, Martin Beheim, also placed it on the globe, which he created shortly before the return of Columbus from the first voyage.


The historian Las Casas testified that Columbus had a world map, which he showed to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, after which they were convinced that the idea was not hopeless.


A number of world maps of the 16th century show the Antarctic continent. As will be seen from what follows, Gerhard Mercator believed in its existence. Comparing all the maps, one can single out only one or two main groups depending on different projections. In accordance with them, Antarctica was copied or recopied only with some amendments by various cartographers.


Mercator Map of Antarctica


Gerhard Kremer, better known as Mercator, is considered the most important cartographer of the 16th century. There is even a tendency to start scientific cartography in his name. And yet there has never been a cartographer more interested in antiquity, more indefatigable in the search for ancient maps, or more respectful of the study of bygone eras.


If Mercator did not believe in Antarctica, it would be understandable why he did not include the map of A. Finaus in his Atlas. He didn't publish a fantasy book. But we have good reason to believe that he admitted the possibility of the existence of this continent: Antarctica on the maps was drawn by him personally. One of her images appeared on folio 9 in the Atlas of 1569 edition.


The projection on the Mercator map of Antarctica is just the one that is named after him. The meridians run parallel from pole to pole, and this, as already noted, greatly exaggerates the size of the polar regions.



Earlier, in 1538, Mercator drew a world map, and also with Antarctica. Its similarity with the work of A. Finaus is striking, but there are also significant differences. Mercator's antarctic circle is inside the continent, like Finaus's, but not at the same distance from the pole. In other words, it looks like Mercator has changed the scale.


On the Finaus map, as has already been shown, the so-called "circus antarcticus" was erroneously presented as the 80th parallel of the original source. Mercator violated the original scale, so we cannot reconstruct the latitude grid on this map, as we have done elsewhere. The value of the longitudes turned out to be extremely accurate.


It seems that Mercator constantly used the ancient primary sources that were available to him. What happened to them afterwards, we do not know, but their influence can be detected, at least in those cases when Mercator lacked information from contemporary travelers, and he depended on ancient materials.


With regard to the map of South America in 1569, a number of interesting details emerge here.


First of all, in relation to the northern coast, it is quite clear that Mercator was dominated by ancient maps, as well as materials from contemporary expeditions. He incorrectly placed the Amazon in relation to the equator, as it was on the map of Piri Reis. But here the course of the river is shown correctly with a number of bends - a meander. The island of Marajo, correctly tied to the equator on the Piri Reis projection, is here confused with the island of Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco. And Trinidad is thus doubled in size. The southeastern coast of South America, from the Tropic of Capricorn to Cape Horn, is very poorly drawn, apparently according to the reports of navigators, while the western coast turns out to be distorted in form.


And at the same time, on the map of 1538, that is, several years earlier, Mercator had already shown a more correct outline of the western coast of South America. What was the reason for this? It can be assumed that in his first map he was based on ancient sources, while in 1569 he already used materials from travelers of his time, who did not know how to correctly determine longitude, but only showed the general direction of the coast.


World map of Arantheus Finaus, 1532


Other portolans of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have been found, which could show Antarctica. A number of such maps came to light because, as already mentioned, many cartographers of the 15th and 16th centuries believed in the existence of a southern continent.


During the Christmas holidays of late 1959, Charles Hapgood was exploring Antarctica in the reference room of the Library of Congress in Washington. For weeks on end he had been working there on hundreds of medieval maps.


“I discovered / he writes / a lot of amazing things that I did not suspect to find, and several maps depicting the southern continent. And then one day I turned the page and was dumbfounded. My gaze fell on the southern hemisphere of the world map drawn by Oronteus Finius in 1531, and I realized that I had before me a genuine, real map of Antarctica!



The general outline of the continent surprisingly coincides with what is shown on modern maps. Almost in place, almost in the center of the continent, was the South Pole. The mountain ranges fringing the shores resembled the numerous ranges discovered in recent years, and enough not to consider this an accidental product of the cartographer's imagination. These ridges have been identified, some on the coast, some in the distance. From many of them, rivers flowed to the sea, very naturally and convincingly fitting into the folds of the relief. This, of course, assumed that the coast was ice-free at the time the map was drawn. The central part of the continent on the map is free from rivers and mountains, which suggests the presence of an ice cap there.


“Charles Hapgood taught the history of science at Keene College, New Hampshire, USA. He was neither a geologist nor a specialist in the history of the ancient world.


“In examining this map of Antarctica on the grid of parallels drawn by Arantheus Finaus, we found that he extended the Antarctic Peninsula too far to the north—up to 15°. At first it was thought that he simply moved the entire continent in the direction of South America. Further work, however, has shown that the Antarctic coastline is abnormally extended in all directions, even reaching the tropics in some places. The whole problem, therefore, was scale. Using some kind of extensive map, the compiler was forced to stretch the Antarctic Peninsula to Cape Horn, almost completely displacing the Drake Passage. Moreover, this mistake was made much earlier, since we found the same distortion on all Antarctic maps of that period, including Piri Reis's portolan. It is likely that this mistake was made in ancient times on the primary source map, skipping a significant part of the coast of South America: after all, there was no free space for it.


The map in question shows the absence of glaciers at a considerable distance from the coast. These are Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, Wilkes Land, Victoria Land (east coast of the Ross Sea), Mary Byrd Land. There was a significant lack of points with coinciding coordinates (with a modern map) for the western coast of the Ross Sea, Ellsworth Land, Edith Ronne Land.


Comparison of the map of Arantheus Finaus with the map of the subglacial relief of Antarctica, compiled by the authorities of various countries during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1959, explains some of the shortcomings of medieval work, and also sheds light on the degree of glaciation at the time when the original map was created.


The IGY expeditions, using seismic sounding, recreated the shape of the earth's surface, hidden by the current ice cap. And it turned out that there is no western coast near the Ross Sea at all; moreover, the rocky bed of the continent runs below ocean level just between the Ross and Weddell seas. If the ice melts, the same Ellsworth Land will become not dry land, but oceanic shallow water.


If the western coast of the Ross Sea and the coast of Ellsworth Land are fictitious land, then the absence of certain physical and geographical characteristics of this sector on the map of A. Finaus becomes understandable. But it seems that the ice cover, at least in West Antarctica, could already exist by the time the maps were compiled, since the inland waterways connecting the Ross, Weddell, Amundsen seas are not shown - everything was already icebound.


Of course, it should be remembered that millennia must have elapsed between the compilation of early and later maps of various parts of Antarctica. Therefore, it cannot be definitely concluded that there was a time when East Antarctica abounded in ice, and it was absent in Western Antarctica. The maps of East Antarctica, after all, could have been drawn millennia after other maps.


Boucher, the French geographer of the 18th century, left for posterity a map that shows the continent at a time when there was no ice at all ... If you get rid of obvious errors in the orientation of Antarctica in relation to other land masses, then it is easy to imagine that this map shows rivers connecting the Ross, Weddell, and Bellingshausen seas.


While studying the mysteries of ancient maps, Charles Hapgood came up with the idea that the accepted theory and timing of the ice ages might be different. The pole shift hypothesis was born. Not gradual, but abrupt.


Albert Einstein was among the first to realize this when he decided to write the preface to a book written by Hapgood in 1953, several years before the latter took up the study of the Piri Reis map:


“I often get correspondence from people who want my opinion on their unpublished ideas. It is clear that these ideas are very rarely of scientific value. However, the very first message I received from Mr. Hapgood literally electrified me. His idea is original, very simple and, if confirmed, will be of great importance for everything connected with the history of the Earth's surface.


These "ideas", formulated in Hapgood's book in 1953, are, in fact, a global geological theory that elegantly explains how and why large areas of Antarctica remained ice-free until 4000 BC, as well as many others. anomalies in earth science. Briefly, his arguments are as follows:


1 Antarctica Wasn't Always Ice-Covered And Was Once Much Warmer Than It Is Today


2. It was warmer because at that time it was not physically located at the South Pole, but was located about 2000 miles north. This "brought it outside the Antarctic Circle and placed it in a temperate or cold temperate zone"


3. The continent moved and took its current position inside the Arctic Circle as a result of the so-called "shift of the earth's crust." This mechanism, which should not be confused with plate tectonics or continental drift, is associated with periodic movements of the lithosphere, the outer crust of the Earth, as a whole "around a soft inner body, just as the peel of an orange could move around the pulp if the connection between them weakened »


4. In the process of such a “journey” to the south, Antarctica gradually cooled down, and on it, little by little, but inevitably, an ice cap grew over several thousand years, until it acquired its current shape.


Einstein summed up Hapgood's discovery this way:


“In the polar region, there is a constant accumulation of ice, which is located asymmetrically around the pole. The rotation of the Earth acts on these asymmetric masses, creating a centrifugal moment that is transferred to the rigid Earth's crust. When the magnitude of such a moment exceeds a certain critical value, it causes the earth's crust to move relative to the part of the Earth's body located inside ... "".


Charles Hapgood:


“The only ice age that has an adequate explanation is the current glaciation in Antarctica. It is perfectly explained. It is quite obvious that it exists simply because Antarctica is at the Pole, and nothing else. This fact does not depend on variations in solar heat input, nor on galactic dust, nor on volcanism, nor on currents flowing under the crust, and has nothing to do with land uplifts or ocean currents. This leads to the conclusion that the best theory to explain the ice age is the one that says: because there was a pole in this place. Thus, it is easy to explain the presence of glaciation in the past in India and Africa, although in our time these places are in the tropics. In the same way, the origin of any glaciation on a continental scale can be explained.


What evidence is there that Antarctica was not always an icy continent?


In 1949, on one of Sir Baird's Antarctic expeditions, sediment samples were taken from the bottom of the Ross Sea. It was produced by drilling. Dr. Jack Huf of the University of Illinois took three cores to study climate evolution in Antarctica. They were sent to the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, where a new dating method developed by nuclear physicist Dr. W. D. Ury was applied.


This method is called ionic for short. At the same time, they operate with three radioactive elements contained in sea water in certain proportions - uranium, ionium, radium. However, their decay period is different, which means that when they fall into the bottom sediment and the moisture cycle stops, the amount of these radioactive elements decreases, but not to the same extent. Therefore, when receiving and examining bottom samples in the laboratory, one can determine their age by changing the proportions of these elements in marine sediments.


The nature of bottom sediments varies greatly depending on the climatic conditions that existed at the time of their formation. If they were carried by the rivers and deposited in the sea, then they are well sorted, and the better, the farther they fall from the mouth of the river. If, however, they are torn from the earth's surface by a glacier and carried into the sea by an iceberg, then their character corresponds to coarse clastic material. If a river has a seasonal cycle, flowing only in the summer, most likely from melting glaciers in the inland, and freezing over every winter, then the precipitation will form in layers, like annual rings on trees.


All these types of sediments have been found in bottom cores from the Ross Sea. Most striking was the presence of a series of layers formed from well-sorted sediments brought to the sea by rivers from ice-free lands. As can be seen from the cores, there have been at least three temperate epochs in Antarctica during the past million years when the Ross Sea coasts should have been ice-free.


The timing of the end of the last warm period in the Ross Sea, determined by Dr. Ury, was of great importance to us. All three cores indicated that the warming ended about 6000 years ago, or in the fourth millennium BC. This was when glacial sediments began to accumulate at the bottom of the Ross Sea in the closest ice age to us. Kern argues that this was preceded by a longer warming period.


Thus, it turns out that ice-free Antarctica was already in the existence of ancient civilizations, and not hundreds of thousands of years ago, as was previously believed.


Alfred Veneger, the creator of the theory of glaciation, apparently also knew about the mechanism of the "ice clock", but did not dare to make his knowledge public. Even during the life of a genius, official science mocked him to its fullest. Everyone poisoned him, only the very lazy one did not “kick” him. He became cautious and suddenly became addicted to travel to Greenland, where he eventually died tragically.


This is a brief history of the appearance of the theory of lithospheric catastrophes, which went to the people under the name of "pole shift".


But many conclusions follow from this. Since there are old maps where Antarctica is shown without icing, we can assume the presence of a developed civilization capable of making such mapping just before this glaciation. But where did this civilization go then?


The fact is that the displacement of the earth's crust will cause the movement of water in the oceans, similar to that which occurs in a sharply moved plate. It is this theory that can explain the biblical Flood. And not every civilization will survive such an event. After this, the survivors are able to slide into barbarism and lose many civilizational achievements. This is also suitable for understanding where Atlantis disappeared. She didn't go anywhere. After the waves destroyed her well-established life, she began to be covered with ice. Now we know it as Antarctica. Archaeological research is hardly possible under ice more than a kilometer thick. Part of the knowledge of this civilization has survived to our time in the form of maps redrawn from more ancient, astronomical concepts and crafts. It is not for nothing that many peoples have stories about people who came from across the sea and taught them crafts, writing and much more.


Such is the story. So far there is no more solid evidence of its correctness. But the existing ones no longer allow to brush aside.


Sergei Kamshilin


Materials used: http://vzglyadzagran.ru

The words Antarctica, Arctic and Antarctica are very similar, but for a person who is poorly versed in geography, they may seem one and the same. However, these areas are located in completely different parts of the world. So what is the difference between the Arctic Antarctic and Antarctica?

Arctic and Antarctica

It would seem that what can distinguish the Arctic and Antarctica? Both of these territories have a fairly severe climate, are always or almost always covered with ice and snow, and have poorly expressed flora and fauna. In fact, the Arctic and Antarctica are at different ends of the world. If you look at these territories on a map or on a globe, then the Arctic will be at the top (in the north), and Antarctica at the bottom (in the south).

Antarctica is a continent, while the Arctic is a geographical area, most of which is located at the North Pole.

Rice. 1. Arctic and Antarctica on the map.

The Arctic covers the extreme parts of North America and Eurasia. The territory of the Arctic includes the island of Greenland and many archipelagos that are located in the Arctic Ocean, for example, Severnaya Zemlya or Franz Josef Land.

Rice. 2. Franz Josef Land.

Translated from the ancient Greek language, the word "Arctic" is translated as "bear". In Greek, it sounds like "arktos".

Antarctica is a continent with an area of ​​14.1 million sq. km. It is on this continent that the lowest temperature on earth is recorded - 89.2 degrees. The average temperature in summer is -35 degrees, and in winter - -65 degrees.

One of the main differences between Antarctica and the Arctic is that Antarctica is completely unsuitable for human habitation. This territory does not belong to any state. The population is from 1500 to 4000 people, but these are not permanent residents, but scientists and researchers who live on the mainland for no more than a year and a half. About 4 million people live in the Arctic, with 2.3 million people living in the Arctic part of Russia.

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Differences between Antarctica and Antarctica

The word "Antarctica" appeared only in the last century. It means "opposite to the Arctic". Indeed, the Arctic and Antarctic are located at different poles of the Earth - North and South.

What about Antarctica and Antarctica? Is it one and the same? So how are Antarctica and the Arctic different?

Antarctica, as mentioned above, is only the mainland. Antarctica, on the other hand, is a territory that, in addition to Antarctica, includes the waters of three oceans (Indian, Pacific, Atlantic), limited by the course of the westerly winds, as well as various islands that are located in the waters of these oceans. The center of Antarctica is the South Pole.

Antarctica is the heart of Antarctica. Because of the glaciers that cover the continent, it is the highest continent in existence. The average height of the glaciers is 2040 meters.

Rice. 3. Glaciers of Antarctica.

The cold pole of our planet is located just in Antarctica. At the Vostok polar station 35 years ago, in 1983, a record low temperature of 89.2 degrees was recorded.

What have we learned?

In this article, the difference between Antarctica and Antarctica was considered, and a comparison was made between the Arctic and Antarctica. The Arctic is adjacent to the North Pole and includes almost the entire Arctic Ocean, as well as the extreme parts of Eurasia and North America. Antarctica is a continent that belongs to the Antarctic region. It was here that the lowest temperature on the planet was recorded.

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