Climate of the polar realms - The Global Climate System: Patterns, Processes, and Teleconnections - page 133

Figure 5.2 Area map,
Antarctica. The light grey
area is the maximum sea ice
extent in early spring.
exploration came with the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957, and
ever since, manned year-round stations have been maintained by several nations.
Antarctica (Figure 5.2 ) has an area of 14 million km 2 , about 10% of the
land surface on Earth. In late winter/early spring the actual size roughly
doubles due to the surrounding sea ice. The high plateau of East Antarctica
extends to a height in excess of 4000 m and the highest point is the Vinson
Massif (5440 m) in the Ellsworth Mountains. The average height of the
continent is 2200 m and it is thereby the highest of all continents on Earth.
There are two major ice sheets in Antarctica, the larger eastern one with more
than 10 million km 2 and the smaller western one, which has a much lower
elevation (850m) and a size of about 2 million km 2 . Antarctica boasts about
90% of all freshwater stored, with an average ice thickness of 2400m; if all
the ice should ever melt, all oceans would rise by some 65m. However, there
is no indication that this could happen in the near future, and it is not even
clear in what direction the mass balance of Antarctica has gone in the last