Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km 2 (5,500,000 sq mi).
Antarctica, the world’s southernmost continent, is almost wholly covered by an ice sheet and is about 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square km) in size.
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent on Earth. The Antarctic ice sheet contains about 7.2 million cubic miles (30 million cubic kilometers) in an area just under 1.5 times...