Antarctica

The view of space from Earth is improved by a thinner atmosphere at higher elevations and a lack of water vapour in the atmosphere caused by freezing temperatures. Biomedical scientists have made discoveries concerning the spreading of viruses and the body’s response to extreme seasonal temperatures. Argentina, Australia, Chile, and Russia also have a large scientific presence on Antarctica. The Belgian Princess Elisabeth station is one of the most modern stations and the first to be carbon-neutral. Overland sightseeing flights operated out of Australia and New Zealand until the Mount Erebus disaster in 1979, when an Air New Zealand plane crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all of the 257 people on board. Tourism in Antarctica is, in part, ecologically focused with expeditions being offered for bird watching tours due to the high numbers of Adélie, King, and Gentoo penguins – among other species.

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• During the early Paleogene, the Antarctic land bridge continued to connect Antarctica with South America as well as to southeastern Australia.
• They are relatively easy to find, as the dark stone meteorites stand out in a landscape of ice and snow, and the flow of ice accumulates them in certain areas.
• Ice shelves are floating sheets of ice that are connected to the continent.
• His expeditions conducted extensive geographical and scientific research, and he is credited with surveying a larger region of the continent than any other explorer.

During the early 19th century, explorer Matthew Flinders doubted the existence of a detached continent south of Australia (then called New Holland) and thus advocated for the “Terra Australis” name to be used for Australia instead. European ideas regarding the existence of a Terra Australis—a vast continent in the far south of the globe to balance the northern lands of Europe, Asia, and North Africa—had existed as an intellectual concept since classical antiquity. During the summer months, about 5,000 people reside at research stations, a figure that drops to around 1,000 in the winter. Antarctica (/ænˈtɑːrktɪkə/ ⓘ)note 1 is Earth’s southernmost and least-populated continent. Once there, the team would march to the pole with dog teams, dispose of extra baggage, and use supplies left by Aurora to reach the other end of the continent.The plan failed. Hydroponics is the practice of growing plants with water and nutrients only.

Territorial claims

Various other bird species visit the ocean around Antarctica, including some that normally reside in the Arctic. Antarctic sea life includes penguins, blue whales, orcas, colossal squids and fur seals. The flightless midge Belgica antarctica, the largest purely terrestrial animal in Antarctica, reaches 6 mm (1⁄4 in) in size. Models suggest that ozone depletion and the enhanced polar vortex effect may also account for the period of increasing sea ice extent, lasting from when observation started in the late 1970s until 2014. The West Antarctic ice sheet is likely to melt completely unless temperatures are reduced by 2 °C (3.6 °F) below 2020 levels.

The first child born in the southern polar region was a Norwegian girl, Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen, born in Grytviken on 8 October 1913. Some of the research stations are staffed year-round, the winter-over personnel typically arriving from their home countries for a one-year assignment. The first semi-permanent inhabitants of regions near Antarctica (areas situated south of the Antarctic Convergence) were British and American sealers who used to spend a year or more on South Georgia, from 1786 onward. The existence of life there is thought to strengthen the argument for the possibility of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa, which may have water beneath its water-ice crust. Even sea ice can harbour unique ecological communities, as it expels all salt from the water when it freezes, which accumulates into pockets of brine that also harbour dormant microorganisms. Smaller forms of life, such as sea cucumbers and free-swimming snails, are also found in both polar oceans.

Conservation and environmental protection

A Census of Marine Life by some 500 researchers during the International Polar Year was released in 2010. There are approximately 40 bird species that breed on or close to Antarctica, including species of petrels, penguins, cormorants, and gulls. Leopard seals are apex predators in the Antarctic ecosystem and migrate across the Southern Ocean in search of food.

The Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, an international treaty that came into force in 1980, regulates fisheries, aiming to preserve ecological relationships. There exists a community of extremophile bacteria in the highly alkaline waters of Lake Untersee. It is thought to be likely that there exists a native bacterial community within the subterranean water body of https://prabhu365-nepal.com/ne Lake Vostok.

The Australian-led ICECAP project utilized advanced aerogeophysical techniques to map deep subglacial basins and channels that connect the ice sheet to the ocean. Researchers study the ice sheets both through on-site fieldwork and remote sensing, typically using satellite technology. Glaciologists study the history and dynamics of floating ice, seasonal snow, glaciers, and ice sheets. There are over 70 permanent and seasonal research stations on the continent; the largest, United States’ McMurdo Station, is capable of housing more than 1,000 people. Over 74,000 tourists visited the region during the 2019–2020 season, of which 18,500 travelled on cruise ships but did not leave them to explore on land. Antarctica is defined as all land and ice shelves south of 60° S for the purposes of the Treaty System.

When the ice begins to melt, brine pockets expand and can combine to form brine channels, and the algae inside the pockets can reawaken and thrive until the next freeze. Multicoloured snow algae are especially abundant in the coastal regions during the summer. The flora largely consists of bryophytes (25 species of liverworts and 100 species of mosses). A combination of freezing temperatures, poor soil quality, and a lack of moisture and sunlight inhibit plant growth, causing low species diversity and limited distribution. The simplified morphology of such fungi, along with their similar biological structures, metabolism systems capable of remaining active at very low temperatures, and reduced life cycles, make them well suited to such environments. Some of the species, having evolved under extreme conditions, have colonised structural cavities within porous rocks and have contributed to shaping the rock formations of the McMurdo Dry Valleys and surrounding mountain ridges.