Antarctic
About Antarctic
Antarctica is the area around the Earth's South Pole and is about the size of the United States - as a continent, it is bigger than both Europe and Australia. The continent is very, very dry - it is basically a frozen desert. On average, less than 2 inches of precipitation falls across the continent during the year and some areas see no precipitation at all.
Because of how cold it is in the continent, there is no vegetation and therefore no wildlife in the interior of the continent - the seals and penguins all live on the coast. There is one sunrise and one sunset each year, with the sun just rotating around the camp during the summer. There is a glacier that covers the entire continent that contains 90% of the world's fresh water. There is 7 million cubic miles of ice on Antarctica and if it was all to melt, the oceans would rise by about 223 feet.
Although Antarctica has no permanent residents, a number of governments maintain permanent research stations throughout the continent. The population of persons doing and supporting science on the continent and its nearby islands varies from approximately 4000 in summer to 1000 in winter. Many of the stations are staffed around the year. Only cold-adapted plants and animals can survive there, including penguins, fur seals, mosses, lichens, and many types of algae.