Overview

Antarctica is the driest, coldest, and windiest continent on Earth. It is also the most inhospitable, being almost totally covered by an ice sheet that is up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) deep. This ice sheet contains 90 percent of the world’s fresh water and...

The Future of Antarctica

What agreements are in place for the protection of Antarctic marine life? There are three agreements that are designed to protect marine life in the seas around Antarctica. The first one to be concluded was the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (CCAS), which...

Global Warming

How vulnerable to climate change are Antarctica’s fauna? Antarctica’s fauna are very vulnerable to climate change. All we have to do is look at the penguins. With the recent dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic, the world has focused on whether polar bears are...

Commercial Activity in Postwar Antarctica

Why did postwar whaling peter out so quickly? The lack of Antarctic whaling activity during World War II allowed whale stocks to begin recovering. But it didn’t take long for whaling ships to reappear once the war ended in 1945. The British and Norwegians were...

The Antarctic Treaty of 1959

Why were the Russians and other claimants suddenly prepared in the late 1950s to reach agreement on the governance of Antarctica? The onset of the Cold War and the arrival of Russian whaling fleets had raised fears that territorial rivalry in Antarctica could erupt into...

Science and Discovery

What role has science played in the discovery and fate of the Antarctic? Science was a motivating factor in the dispatch of the earliest expeditions to Antarctica. In the eighteenth century, explorers and their sponsors wanted to fill in the empty spaces on the globe...

First Contact

How did Antarctica become the desolate, ice-cloaked continent we know today? Hundreds of millions of years ago, Antarctica was part of a much bigger continent. Dubbed “Gondwana” or “Gondwanaland” by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, different parts of the continent broke away and gradually moved...

War on the Ice

Why did Nazi Germany send an expedition to Antarctica? Although Germany had been involved in Antarctic exploration since the early twentieth century, its expeditions failed to meet the expectations of their supporters. In the 1930s the Germans also had a growing involvement in the whaling...

The Race for Antarctica in the Twentieth Century

What caused a boom in Antarctic whaling in the late nineteenth century? The 1860s and 1870s saw a decline in whaling when kerosene largely replaced whale oil for heating and lighting. The resulting drop in profits caused fewer whaling fleets to set out to sea....

Imperial Rivalry

How did nations justify their claim to territories they were not occupying? As the windiest, coldest, and driest continent on the planet, Antarctica poses great challenges for nations that aspire to own part or all of it. Most of the continent is covered by an...