The continent of Antarctica, which covers the entire South Pole, has an area of 14,107,637 km².
Antarctica is the highest continent on Earth, with an average altitude of 2,000 meters above sea level. Its territory is home to about 80% of the planet's freshwater. It is also the continent with the lowest average humidity on Earth and the lowest average temperature (-17 degrees Celsius).
Only a few portions of the continent are free of a permanent ice cover. Most of Antarctica is covered by a gigantic indlandsis; the average thickness of the ice covering the continent is 1,600 meters; the maximum recorded thickness is 4,776 meters, in the Adellia Land.
It is difficult to imagine how much water must be frozen in Antarctica to form a 1.6 km thick ice sheet over an entire continent.
It is estimated that if the Antarctic ice sheet melted, the released water would raise the level of the oceans by about 72 meters, flooding a quarter of all the world's dry land.
.
.
