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Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km 2 (5,500,000 sq mi). Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet , with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi).
Antarctic. The Antarctic ( / ænˈtɑːrtɪk / or / ænˈtɑːrktɪk /, American English also / æntˈɑːrtɪk / or / æntˈɑːrktɪk /; commonly / æˈnɑːrtɪk /) [ Note 1] is a polar region around Earth 's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole . The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen ...
The Antarctic continent, located in the Earth 's southern hemisphere, is centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle. It is washed by the Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean or, depending on definition, the southern Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. It has an area of more than 14.2 million km 2.
Lake Vostok ( Russian: озеро Восток, romanized : ozero Vostok) is the largest of Antarctica 's 675 known [ 3] subglacial lakes . Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia's Vostok Station under the surface of the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is at 3,488 m (11,444 ft) above mean sea level.
The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of 14 million square kilometres (5.4 million square miles) and an average thickness of over 2 kilometres (1.2 mi). It is the largest of Earth's two current ice sheets, containing 26.5 million cubic kilometres (6,400,000 cubic miles) of ice ...
Antarctic Circle. Coordinates: 66°33′50″S 0°0′0″W. Map of the Antarctic with the Antarctic Circle in blue. The Antarctic Circle is the most southerly of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of Earth. The region south of this circle is known as the Antarctic, and the zone immediately to the north is called the Southern ...
East Antarctica is generally higher than West Antarctica, and is considered the coldest place on Earth. The subglacial Gamburtsev Mountain Range, about the size of the European Alps, in the center of East Antarctica, are believed to have been the nucleation site for the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, just underneath Dome A.
Antarctic Plate. The Antarctic Plate is a tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and some remote islands in the Southern Ocean and other surrounding oceans. After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea ), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to ...