Antarctica is a Desert: The moment one hears the word “desert,” images of scorching sand, blazing heat, and endless dunes fill their imagination. But one of the biggest deserts on Earth does not fit into that picture. Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, has been officially classified as a desert; the reason has nothing to do with temperature but all to do with rainfall.

Dry as a Bone: The Real Reason

A desert is generally described as a land area that receives very little precipitation, particularly less than 250 mm in a year. Antarctica, despite being covered with ice, also receives very low moisture. Parts of the continent receive less than 20 mm per year, which is even drier than the Sahara; strong, dry winds take away any moisture from the air without letting it reach the ground.
The Ice Paradox

So how does a desert end up covered in ice?

The ice sheets you see today took millions of years to form. Even small amounts of snowfall compacted and froze into thick layers. In some places, the ice sheet is more than 4 kilometers thick, but the continent still gets almost no new annual snowfall. The existing ice just never melts because of the sub-zero temperatures. A Desert Full of Life Despite these uninhabitable conditions, Antarctica actually harbors more life than one may think.

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Underneath the ice lie freshwater lakes, ancient microbes, and other hardy organisms, called extremophiles. Living along its coasts are penguins, seals, and whales, dependent upon the rich Southern Ocean for survival. Earth’s Climate Time Capsule. It is also the site of one of the world’s greatest climate archives. Scientists drill ice cores to study trapped air bubbles from hundreds of thousands of years ago for insight into Earth’s changing climate.

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