7 August, 2000

Antarctica Is A Desert!!!

I find Antarctica to be fascinating, and I am extremely excited about going there. I had no idea how fascinating it was until my 5th grade class started studying it three years ago. Antarctica is the second smallest continent (Australia is the first) on earth. It is also the windiest continent and it has the highest elevation. Most surprising of all, Antarctica is a desert. How can it be a desert when it doesn't have any sand, you say? Although we usually think of deserts of having sand, the actual scientific definition of a desert is an area that has less than 2 inches of precipitation per year, whether it has sand or not. So although most people think of the Sahara as being the largest desert in the world, Antarctica is much bigger and it has the honor of being the world's largest desert. It might seem strange that Antarctica is a desert when most of it is covered in ice and snow. But all that ice has piled up year after year for millions of years. That's a lot of years when you realize that the ice can be miles thick in some places. Stay tuned for more fascinating facts in the next few days!

The 2001-02 Antarctic TEA's