#头条首发#南极洲是最后一个被人类发现的大陆, there are a lot of labels on its body.
There are extreme weather here, for example, Antarctica is the coldest place on earth, how cold is it?
The average temperature here is minus 25 degrees Celsius, and from April to October, the temperature drops below 60 degrees Celsius for half a year.
The lowest temperature measured since the establishment of the station was minus 94.5 degrees Celsius, which was recorded in Norway near the South Pole in 1967.
Antarctica is also the driest place in the world.
Speaking of which, many people will be suspicious, isn't it, there is a lot of ice here.
Does ice have anything to do with air on the ground? No.
In addition, Antarctica belongs to the polar high-pressure environment, so its air flow is sinking, so precipitation is not easy to form.
There is also the famous polar easterly, which blows from high latitudes to low latitudes, which further reduces the conditions for precipitation in Antarctica, so that less than five centimeters of precipitation is received per year.
The above points make the drying of the Antarctic continent inevitable.
For example, there is a place on the continent of Antarctica that is free of snow and ice, and this place is called the Antarctic Wadis. (Note: There are three such dry valleys, which are called Taylor Valley, Wright Valley, and Victoria Valley)
According to scientists' estimates, these dry grains have not rained or snowed for 2 million years.
Even a little rain will be quickly dried by the wind, so there is neither ice nor snow in this area, which is out of place with its surroundings.
Therefore, it is called dry grain, and it is not in vain.
After entering the Wadi Valley, you will see seal carcasses scattered in the Wadi Valley, because of the special environment of Wadi Valley, the seal carcasses here may have died hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
The unique environment of Wadi has perfectly preserved these seal carcasses.
Antarctica is also the continent with the most intense and frequent storms in the world.
Starting from the continental center of Antarctica, towards the edge of Antarctica, Antarctica's most unique polar easterly winds blow.
The wind usually blows in an anti-clockwise direction, with an average speed of 17 to 18 meters per second, with the fastest recorded polar easterly wind blowing at 150 meters per second.
If you want to count the instantaneous wind speed, the highest record is 100 meters per second, which is the largest wind speed ever recorded in the world.
In this kind of wind, people can be blown away.
If that doesn't reflect Antarctica's speciality, let's take a look at a few more data.
Antarctica covers an area of 14 million square kilometers, accounting for 9.4% of the Earth's land area, ranking fifth in terms of area among the seven continents.
It also has 17,968 kilometers of coastline.
The most peculiar thing is that 98% of such a vast area is covered by ice and snow, and according to scientists, the thickness of these ice layers is as high as two kilometers, which is a world of ice and snow.
Such a thick layer of ice allows it to gather 75% of the world's freshwater resources.
These data only have an ignorant feeling that Antarctica is an ice and snow world, and I can say that I can feel the terrifying data of this ice and snow world, and experience it.
Antarctica is a place with an average altitude of 2,350 meters above sea level, and the inland plains are as high as 3,700 meters.
In fact, this kind of high altitude is all flowery, and it is supported by ice, and the ice on the surface of Antarctica is removed, and the average altitude of the entire Antarctic continent will only be 410 meters high.
Scientists estimate that there are 24 million cubic kilometers of ice stored on the continent of Austrora alone.
There are 220,000 large icebergs at sea, which is five times more than the icebergs of the Arctic Ocean.
When you add up the ice on the sea and on land, there are 18,000 cubic kilometers.
So with the current phenomenon of global warming, scientists are worried that this world of ice and snow will melt, and then the world's sea level will rise by 60 meters.
In fact, 170 million years ago, Antarctica was not what it is now, it had a temperate climate, large forests, and even a lot of ancient life.
Even now, scientists have discovered that in the heart of Antarctica, under the thick layer of ice, there is a lake that is estimated to have an ancient ecosystem that is different from the surface of the earth.
How so? On the surface of the Antarctic continent, some flora and fauna are also found, but very few.
Some people will say that Antarctica has walruses, sea lions, seals, penguins, but know that these are all coastal animals.
So are there any flora and fauna in Antarctica?
In the case of animals, that is, a small wingless red fly discovered in the late seventies of the last century, no other land animals have been found.
As for plants, they are just a few species of mosses and algae.
That's why Antarctica has the reputation of being a magical continent.
So how did such a continent come to be?
Discover Antarctica
It all started in 1482.
At that time there was a man named Diego. Cowan's Portuguese navigator not only reached the equator, but also crossed it.
He was the first navigator in Europe to do so.
So he made a summary of this experience of crossing the equator.
For one, the equator is not as hot as expected; Second, there is still land south of the equator.
What is south of the equator? It is the southern tip of the African continent, from the equator to Antarctica, and you can see the African continent in a third of the way.
Then there will be discovery and exploration.
Many navigators began to explore, and the most famous of them are these.
The first was Christopher Columbus, who set out in 1492 and eventually discovered the American continent.
Then in 1519 he crossed the American continent and sailed westward to India, and then on October 21, 1520, he entered a waterway through which he reached the other side of the Americas.
And this waterway was named the Strait of Magellan.
Where is the Strait of Magellan located?
He was also on the route to Antarctica, a point equivalent to three-fifths of the distance from the equator to Antarctica.
This place is much closer to Antarctica.
But as soon as Magellan crossed the waterway, their voyage was essentially over.
And gave a name to an island at the southern tip of South America - Ground of Fire.
It was called the Fire Land because the first thing Magellan saw was a bonfire lit by the island's aborigines.
The place is huge, belonging to Argentina to the east and Chile to the west.
When the time came to 1577, a navigator from England named Francis Murphy. Drake, who prepares for his second circumnavigation of the world in human history.
So he led his team through the Strait of Magellan, where he also saw the Land of Fire, but when he entered the Pacific Ocean, he encountered a hurricane.
Even now humans have no way to challenge the forces of nature, so his fleet is blown all the way south.
There was no way, Derek could only succumb to nature and head south.
As a result, he discovered that the Land of Fire was not a continent, but just a larger island.
So this place has the name of Tierra del Fuego.
After that, navigators began to move around the area, and they found a lot of things in the Pacific Ocean, such as all kinds of small islands, then larger islands, and eventually New Zealand and Australia.
This kind of exploration has never stopped.
By the time of 1773, the Englishman Cook and his fleet began to go south again, this time crossing the Antarctic Circle.
So Cook was the first person to enter Antarctica.
But Cook's voyage made no land, and his closest trip to the south was on January 30, 1774, two thousand kilometers from the South Pole.
Cook didn't go any further in the end because the cold weather beat him.
Because the further south you go, the colder the weather becomes, and the more ice there is on the sea.
These ice floes on the sea hindered him from moving forward.
So who discovered Antarctica?
This has become a difficult thing to determine in history.
The Russians, the British, the Americans, they all said they were the first to see Antarctica.
All three described seeing land, but there was no way to determine whether they were seeing islands or land.
It was only in the 19th century that humans began to know for sure that they had seen Antarctica.
First of all, in 1831, a British navigator walked a long way south from Africa, and then a hundred kilometers from the Antarctic Circle, he saw land, but because of the obstruction of the ice, he also had no way to get close, so he could only look at it from a distance.
In 1840, French explorers also entered the Antarctic Circle and discovered a long coastline.
Almost at the same time, the Americans also saw this coastline in boats.
So after so many people's experiences and observations, it is determined that there is a continent called Antarctica.
This is how Antarctica was discovered.
Why doesn't Antarctica belong to any country?
As mentioned above, the environment in Antarctica is so harsh that it is impossible for humans to live here.
Therefore, the people who can come here are basically scientific researchers from various countries and whaling teams.
Today, more than 40 perennial scientific research stations have been established on this land, and less than 750 scientific researchers can spend the winter in these research stations.
Of course, in the summer, there will be a little more people, but not more than two thousand.
Then there are tourists who come to Antarctica, usually to the Antarctic Peninsula or Ross Island, but at most about 1,000 people.
So it's a place that can't be lived in all year round, and even if it's inhabited, it's not for the purpose of living.
But even then, there are countries that want to occupy the land.
First the British published their territorial demand for Antarctica in 1908, and then other countries followed, such as New Zealand, Norway and so on.
By the fifties of the last century, these countries had almost carved up Antarctica.
At this time, the Soviet Union and the United States, the two largest countries in the world at that time, had no land planning in Antarctica.
So the United States and the Soviet Union accelerated the division of the remaining land in Antarctica (20%).
The United States occupied the center of Antarctica, and the Soviet Union transported supplies.
So that's how things get complicated.
Complexity means that there are contradictions, quarrels, and even the establishment of military bases.
Eventually, it got so big that everyone sat down at the negotiating table, and the 1958 Antarctic Conference was born.
This led to the establishment of the Antarctic Treaty, which finally determined that Antarctica belonged to the whole world, to all mankind, and could not be divided by a few countries.
Only scientific research can be carried out here, and no military bases can be established here
This Antarctic treaty regulates the activities of people from various countries on this land.