Climate

Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth, caused by it's geographic location at the bottom of the Earth. In her spherical shape, Earth is tilted to 23.5° with the poles tilting away from the sun. As the poles are further away from the equator, the sun's ray must penetrate more of the Earth's atmosphere before reaching the surface of the polar region. While many wonder why Antarctica is colder than Arctic, the reason is due to the different environment that surrounds both the polar region - Antarctica is completely surrounded by an ocean while Arctic is surrounded by landmass. On top of it, the optical properties of the ice and snow allow greater solar radiation reflection at 80% - 95%. The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth is -89.2°C (-128.6°F) at Russia's base Vostok in July 1983, the result of continuous darkness in winter and combined with the high altitude where the base is located.

The continent is also the windiest continent on the planet with average wind speed at 5.5 meters per second (18 feet per second) up to as high as 24 meters per second (79 feet per second). It's katabatik winds (Greek's kata meaning downwards) is the highest wind velocity in the world which was recorded in French base of Dumond d'Urville in July 1972 at 327kmph (190mph). Katabatik winds is formed when air on the cold ice sheet in the higher plateaux becomes colder, denser and heavier. With gravitation pull, the heavy air spills over the mountain slopes towards the coastline with frightening speed and it can carry up to 10,000 microscopic ice crystals particles within a square inch.

The Antarctic inland receives an average precipitation at about 50mm (approximately 2in) in the form of snow - less than that of Sahara Desert's - while its coastline receives only about 200mm (8 in); qualifying Antarctica as being the driest continent and a desert. A desert is characterised as a region that receives less than 254 mm (10 in) of annual rainfall or precipitation.