ANTARCTICA AT A GLANCE

Here are some facts and figures about Antarctica.

History: Britain’s Capt. James Cook is believed to have first entered Antarctic waters during an expedition from 1773 to 1775, and was followed by several other mariners who discovered land there in the early 1800s. The American Capt. Charles Wilkes first identified it as a continent in 1840, when he traced 1,500 miles of coastline. The first inland expeditions were carried out by Norway’s Leonard Kristensen and Britain’s Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackleton in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Roald Amundsen of Norway reached the South Pole in December, 1911, and Scott arrived a month later, but his four-man party perished.

Geography: Antarctica has an area of 5.1 million square miles, larger than Europe’s, and has been determined to have 17,500 miles of rugged coastline. Its uneven surface of rock and gravel descends toward the center like a soup bowl, under the vast weight of a rounded cap of ice more than a mile deep in some places. The total volume of ice on the continent is equivalent to 72% of all the water on earth. The continent is divided by the Transantarctic Mountains and includes other clusters of peaks, including Visson Massif, the highest at 16,864 feet above sea level.

Climate: Antarctica’s inland temperatures remain almost constantly below freezing, making it the coldest continent. On the Antarctic Peninsula, temperatures can rise above freezing during the austral summer. The lowest reading ever, at the Soviet Union’s Vostok Station on July 21, 1983, was minus 89.2 degrees Celsius. There is little precipitation in Antarctica, an average of 4 inches a year.

Politics: The continent is administered by the Antarctic Treaty, signed by 12 nations in 1961. The signers agreed to suspend territorial claims and dedicate the region to peaceful research. Eight other nations have since become voting members, and 18 more have observer status. The treaty is up for review in 1991. Seven nations make direct territorial claims to parts of the continent, with some claims overlapping. Other countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, refuse to recognize any claims.