Antarctic Lakes

Hodgson, Dominic A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3841-3746. 2012 Antarctic Lakes. In: Bengtsson, Lars; Herschy, Reginald W.; Fairbridge, Rhodes W., (eds.) Encyclopedia of Lakes and Reservoirs. Dordrecht, Springer, 26-31.

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Abstract/Summary

The Antarctic continent, including its ice shelves, has an area of 13.8 million km2, about half the size of North America and 1.3 times the size of Europe. It is also the highest, windiest, coldest, and driest of the continents. Almost the entire land surface of Antarctica is covered by a vast ice cap, with an area more than six times larger than its counterpart in Greenland. In places, the ice cap is 4 km thick. Here, summer temperatures rarely get above −20°C and monthly means fall below −60°C in winter. Vostok station, at 78°South holds the record for the lowest ever temperature recorded at the surface of the Earth (−89.5°C). On the coasts of Antarctica temperatures are generally close to freezing in the summer months (December–February), or even slightly positive, particularly in the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Item Type:	Publication - Book Section
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1007/978-1-4020-4410-6_38
ISBN:	9781402056161
ISSN:	1388-4360
NORA Subject Terms:	Hydrology
Date made live:	15 Feb 2022 14:34 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/531947

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