It's the norm for people from places with difficult weather to brag about how awful it is to live in their home. (I still complain about Kansas, despite not having lived there in almost four years.) Over the next few posts, I'm going to be going over the actual serious contenders, though. At the end, I'll be having a vote to determine what people think the actual worst place is. Our second contender? The Antarctic Ice Sheet.
This is what the overwhelming majority of Antarctica looks like. [Image source]
Do you know what lives natively atop the 4.7 kilometres (2.9 mi) thick East Antarctic Ice Sheet? Nothing. Literally nothing. No plants. No animals. No bacteria. Absolutely nothing. The only life in Eastern, also known as Greater, Antarctica is either present on the thin coastlines where there is rock exposed, and there you find some moss, bacteria, and one or two species of insect. Penguins and seals as well, but they spend most of their time, and get all their food, from the ocean. There are no large, native land animals.
There are a few people atop the ice sheet at scientific research stations. They're few, far between and generally only there for the summer. Temperatures get as low as -85 °C in the winter. (-121 °F.) The sun stays up for weeks at a time in the summer, and it stays dark for weeks at a time in the winter. The alltime heat record for the continent (which occurred on the Antarctic Peninsula, which extends far north from the rest of the continent) is 17.5 °C (63.5 °F).
Navigation atop the ice sheet is extraordinarily difficult. The ice sheet is completely flat on top. There are no hills or visible relief of any sort. The closer you get to the south pole, the worse compasses work. (At the magnetic south pole, literally every single direction is north.) And, though the ice sheet looks perfectly flat, there are countless crevasses covered by only a single layer of snow, and there's no way to detect them except by probing ahead of you before every step you take. Step on one you didn't discover? You're dead or dying down an icy abyss.
As if all that wasn't bad enough, you have to deal with the wind. Antarctica is the windiest continent on the planet by a landslide. Wind atop the East Antarctic ice sheet never stops blowing. There's nothing to stop it or slow it down- it's the flattest place on Earth. It just keeps blowing. And blowing. And blowing. It can get extremely fierce, too- it's been clocked at 153 km/h. (95 mph) These boreal winds are katabatic- that is, they're flowing downhill. Though the ice sheet looks perfectly level while standing on it, it actually takes the form of a mindbogglingly huge dome. The wind is always blowing from the top of the dome downwards. Other weather never even shows up, because the katabatic winds just blow it away. There are weather stations in Antarctica where the average wind speed is over gale force. The AVERAGE windspeed.
More of the ice cap scenery. [Image source]
Oh, and to add insult to injury, the ice sheet counts as one of the driest deserts on the planet! There's very little precipitation- all of which arrives as snow- and it also has some of the driest air on the planet. There is so little humidity that cracked lips and chafed skin are the default- moisturizer is worth its weight in gold at Antarctic research stations.
And don't forget the blizzards! They can show up with little to no warning whatsoever, which is fun. Visibility in an Antarctic blizzard can drop below 100 feet very, very quickly. (25 foot visibility is very common, and zero visibility is far from unknown.) Temperature including windchill regularly drops to 100 °F (−73 °C). Oh, and that windchill comes from 102 km/h (63 mph) winds. Want to know how people train to navigate in these blizzards? By putting a bucket over their head and trying to find their way around. (I'm not joking even a little bit.)
While the top of the ice sheet might be brutally inhospitable, there is a network of liquid lakes and rivers beneath the surface! They're renowned for their bizarre behavior, too- many of them flow uphill, since they're driven more strongly by pressure than gravity. I wrote a blog post on the largest of the lakes, Lake Vostok, a while back.
Bibliography:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151009-where-is-the-windiest-place-on-earth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Antarctica#Flora_and_fauna
http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/antarctica/east-antarctic-ice-sheet/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Antarctica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica_Weather_Danger_Classification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_ice_sheet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_of_Antarctica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Antarctica
https://www.livescience.com/21677-antarctica-facts.html
Wow I really love this article, even if it looks a hard place to live on.
Btw, the picture reminds me one I shot when flying above Antartica ... here it is :
it was really magical.
Those are amazing shots! I'd love to hear the story about you visiting Antarctica, I'm really jealous!
I unfortunately didn't visit Antartica, I just flew over it, but it was so breathtaking I was almost crying looking through the window, and I'm not exaggerating. It was absolutely stunning, I can't tell you the feeling I had. Hopefully I will visit there sometime! Thanks for your comment!
I hope you get to visit there too! (Heck, I hope I get to visit!)
"Temperature including windchill regularly drops to 100 °F " tha is insane how could u survive in that temp?
Being in shelter is essentially the only way- preferably something a lot more sturdy than a tent. There's a lot of reasons nothing lives up there.
Wow this is crazy, the people living there mus drink a lot of alcohol. Most people are not build for this kind of temperature.
Great post!
Yeah, alcoholism is, in fact, a severe problem among scientists, workers, and other residents of the various Antarctic bases.
Wow! It is only for tough guys! Beautiful photos.
It's far from a friendly place, that's for sure!
I usually don't my place (Nigeria) was that bad, didn't know there were other contenders. Ice post
Oh, we're not done yet- there are some truly awful contenders yet to come. Did you read the first post about the Atacama desert?
Yes I did
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I want to express what first photo means to me. Seeing the details in front of me, further no details but clearness ant in the end it gets connected with the sky means that the functionality has began. Excellent.
Wow Amazing Places..very good writing deer
Great post there, keep up good work !
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