Map of Antarctica without ice. Maximum ice thickness in Antarctica: features and interesting facts

2. The coldest place on Earth is a high ridge in Antarctica, where the temperature was recorded at -93.2 ° C.

3. Some areas of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (an ice-free part of Antarctica) have not had rain or snow for the past 2 million years.

5. In Antarctica, there is a waterfall with water red as blood, which is explained by the presence of iron, which oxidizes when it comes into contact with air.

9. There are no polar bears in Antarctica (they are only in the Arctic), but there are a lot of penguins here.

12. Melting ice in Antarctica caused a slight change in gravity.

13. There is a Chilean town in Antarctica with a school, hospital, hotel, post office, internet, TV and mobile phone network.

14. The Antarctic ice sheet has been around for at least 40 million years.

15. There are lakes in Antarctica that never freeze because of the heat coming from the bowels of the Earth.

16. The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 14.5°C.

17. Since 1994, the use of sled dogs has been banned on the continent.

18. Mount Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost active volcano on Earth.

19. Once upon a time (more than 40 million years ago) Antarctica was as hot as California.

20. There are seven Christian churches on the continent.

21. Ants, whose colonies are distributed over almost the entire land surface of the planet, are absent in Antarctica (as well as in Iceland, Greenland and several remote islands).

22. The territory of Antarctica is larger than Australia by about 5.8 million square kilometers.

23. Most of Antarctica is covered with ice, about 1% of the land is free from ice cover.

24. In 1977, Argentina sent a pregnant woman to Antarctica so that the Argentinean baby would become the first person born on this harsh mainland.

Antarctica is the least explored continent located in the south of the world. Most of its surface has an ice cover, up to 4.8 km thick. The Antarctic ice sheet contains 90% (!) of all the ice on our planet. It is so heavy that under it the mainland sank almost 500 m. Today, the world is seeing the first signs of global warming in Antarctica: large glaciers are collapsing, new lakes are appearing, and the soil is losing its ice cover. Let's simulate the situation, what will happen if Antarctica loses its ice.

How will Antarctica itself change?

Today the area of ​​Antarctica is 14,107,000 km². If the glaciers melt, these numbers will drop by a third. The mainland will become almost unrecognizable. Under the ice are numerous mountain ranges and massifs. The western part will definitely become an archipelago, and the eastern part will remain the mainland, although, given the rise of ocean waters, it will not hold such a status for a long time.

At the moment, many representatives of the plant world are found on the Antarctic Peninsula, islands and coastal oases: flowers, ferns, lichens, algae, and recently their diversity has been gradually increasing. There are also fungi and some bacteria, and seals and penguins occupy the coast. Already now, on the same Antarctic Peninsula, the appearance of tundra is observed, and scientists are sure that with warming there will be both trees and new ones.

By the way, Antarctica holds several records: the lowest recorded temperature on Earth is 89.2 degrees below zero; there is the largest crater on Earth; the strongest and longest winds.

Today there is no permanent population in Antarctica. There are only employees of scientific stations, and sometimes tourists visit it. With climate change, the former cold continent may become suitable for permanent human habitation, but now it is difficult to talk about this with certainty - everything will depend on the current climatic situation.

How will the world change due to the melting of glaciers?

Rising water levels in the world's oceans

So, scientists have calculated that after the ice sheet melts, The sea level will rise by almost 60 meters. And this is a lot and will be equated with a global catastrophe. The coastline will shift significantly, and today's coastal zone of the continents will be under water.

If we talk, then its central part will not suffer much. In particular, Moscow is located 130 meters above the current sea level, so the flood will not reach it. Such large cities as Astrakhan, Arkhangelsk, St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Makhachkala will go under water. Crimea will turn into an island - only its mountainous part will rise above the sea. And in the Krasnodar Territory, only Novorossiysk, Anapa and Sochi will be flooded. Siberia and the Urals will not be subjected to too much flooding - mostly residents of coastal settlements will have to be relocated.

The Baltic states, Denmark and Holland will almost completely disappear. In general, European cities such as London, Rome, Venice, Amsterdam and Copenhagen will go under water along with all their cultural heritage, so while there is time, be sure to visit them and take pictures on Instagram, because your grandchildren will most likely already do this they won't be able to.

The Americans will also have a hard time, who will definitely be left without Washington, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and many other large coastal cities.

Climate

The climate will endure unpleasant changes leading to the melting of the ice sheet. According to environmentalists, the ice of Antarctica, Antarctica and those that are on mountain peaks help maintain the temperature balance on the planet, cooling its atmosphere. Without them, this balance will be upset.

Large quantity incoming fresh water into the oceans will certainly affect direction of major ocean currents, which largely determine the climatic conditions in many regions. So it is not yet possible to say with certainty what will become of our weather.

Paradoxically, due to global warming, some countries will begin to experience lack of fresh water. And not only because of the arid climate. The fact is that deposits of snow in the mountains provide vast territories with water, and after it melts, there will be no such benefit anymore.

Economy

All this will greatly affect the economy, even if the process of flooding is gradual. Take the US and China, for example! Whether you like it or not, these countries greatly influence the economic situation around the world. In addition to the problem of displacing tens of millions of people and losing their capital, the states will lose almost a quarter of their manufacturing capacity, which will ultimately hit the global economy. And China will be forced to say goodbye to its huge trading ports, which will reduce the flow of products to the world market at times.

How are things today?

Some scientists reassure us that the observed melting of glaciers is normal, because. somewhere they disappear, and somewhere they are formed, and thus the balance is maintained. Others point out that there are still reasons for concern, and provide convincing evidence.

Not so long ago, British scientists analyzed 50 million satellite images of the Antarctic ice sheets and came to the conclusion that their melting is very fast. In particular, the gigantic Totten glacier, comparable in size to the territory of France, causes concern. The researchers noticed that it was washed away by warm salt water, accelerating its decay. According to forecasts, this glacier can raise the level of the World Ocean by as much as 2 meters. It is assumed that the Larsen B glacier will collapse by 2020. And he, by the way, as much as 12,000 years.

According to the BBC, Antarctica loses as much as 160 billion tons of ice every year. And this number is growing rapidly. Scientists say they did not expect such a rapid melting of the southern ice.

By the way, the name "Antarctica" means "opposite the Arctic" or "opposite the north."

The most annoying thing is that the process of melting glaciers further increases the greenhouse effect. The fact is that the ice sheets of our planet reflect part of the sunlight. Without this, heat will linger in the Earth's atmosphere in large volumes, thereby raising the average temperature. And the growing area of ​​the World Ocean, whose waters collect heat, will only aggravate the situation. Besides a large number of melt water also adversely affects glaciers. Thus, the ice reserves, not only in Antarctica, but throughout the globe, are melting faster and faster, which ultimately threatens with big problems.

In 1929, a map dated 1513 was discovered in one of the ancient palaces of Constantinople. The map, perhaps, would not have aroused much interest if it were not for the image of the Americas on it (one of the earliest in history) and the signature of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis. Then, in the 1920s, in the wake of the national upsurge, it was especially important for the Turks to emphasize the role of the Turkish cartographer in creating one of the earliest maps of America. The map began to be closely studied, as well as the history of its creation. And here is what has been revealed.

In 1513, Admiral of the Turkish fleet Piri Reis completed work on a large map of the world for his geographical atlas Bahriye. He himself did not travel much, but when compiling a map, he used about 20 cartographic sources. Of these, eight maps belonged to the time of Ptolemy, some belonged to Alexander the Great, and one, as Piri Reis writes in his book The Seven Seas, "was recently compiled by an infidel named Colombo." And then the admiral says: “An infidel named Colombo, a Genoese, discovered these lands. A book fell into the hands of the named Colombo, in which he read that on the edge of the Western Sea, far in the West, there are shores and islands. All kinds of metals and precious stones were found there. The aforementioned Colombo studied this book for a long time ... Colombo also learned about the passion of the natives for glass jewelry from this book and took them with him to exchange them for gold.

Let's leave aside Columbus and his mysterious book for now, although a direct indication that he knew where he was sailing is already amazing. Unfortunately, neither this book nor the map of Columbus has come down to us. But several sheets of the map from the Bahriye atlas miraculously survived and were published in Europe in 1811. But then they were not given much importance. It wasn't until 1956, when a Turkish naval officer donated the maps to the US Naval Hydrographic Office, that US military cartographers conducted research to confirm or disprove the seemingly impossible: the map showed the coastline of Antarctica - 300 years before it was discovered!

A report was soon received: “The claim that the lower part of the map shows the Princess Martha Coast [part of] Queen Maud Land in Antarctica, as well as the Palmer Peninsula, is justified. We found this explanation to be the most logical and possibly correct. The geographic details depicted at the bottom of the map are in perfect agreement with the seismic data taken through the ice cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition in 1949. This means that the coastline was mapped before it was covered in ice. The ice in this area is approximately 1.5 km thick. We have no idea how these data could be obtained with the assumed level of geographical knowledge in 1513.

So the Piri Reis map began to reveal its secrets. Here are just a few of them.

The map accurately shows the coastline of Antarctica

Antarctica as a continent was discovered in 1818, but many cartographers, including Gerard Mercator, still believed in the existence of a continent in the extreme south and plotted its supposed outlines on their maps. The Piri Reis map, as already mentioned, displays the coastline of Antarctica with high accuracy - 300 years before its discovery!

But this is not the biggest mystery, especially since several ancient maps are known, including the Mercator map, which, as it turned out, depicts, and very accurately, Antarctica. Previously, they simply did not pay attention to it, because " appearance» The continent on the map can be highly distorted depending on the map projections used: it is not so easy to project the surface of the globe onto a plane. The fact that many ancient maps accurately reproduce not only Antarctica, but also other continents became known after calculations made in the middle of the last century, taking into account various projections used by old cartographers.

But the fact that the Piri Reis map shows the coast of Antarctica, not yet covered with ice, is difficult to comprehend! After all, the modern appearance of the coastline of the southern continent is given by a powerful ice cover that goes far beyond the boundaries of real land. It turns out that Piri Reis used the sources that were compiled by people who saw Antarctica before the glaciation? But this cannot be, since these people should have lived millions of years ago! The only explanation accepted by modern scientists for this fact is the theory of the periodic change of the Earth's poles, according to which the last such change could occur about 6,000 years ago, and it was then that Antarctica began to be covered with ice again. That is, we are talking about navigators who lived 6000 years ago and compiled maps, according to which (as in the map of Piri Reis) modern ones were clarified? Incredible...

The map is tied to Cairo

Interestingly, the Piri Reis map also gives an answer to the question of where these ancient sailors lived. (Or not navigators, if they used other means of transportation?) The fact is that a professional cartographer, studying an ancient map and comparing it with modern ones, can determine what kind of projection the map creator used. And when the Piri Reis map was compared with the modern one, compiled in a polar equal-area projection, they found their almost complete similarity. In particular, the map of the Turkish admiral of the 16th century literally repeats the map compiled by the US Air Force during the Great Patriotic War.

But a map drawn in polar equal area projection must have a center. In the case of the American map, it was Cairo, where an American military base was located during the war years. And from this, as the Chicago scientist Charles Hapgood, who thoroughly studied the Piri Reis map, showed, it directly follows that the center of the ancient map, which became the prototype of the admiral's map, was right there, in Cairo, or its environs. That is, the ancient cartographers were the Egyptians who lived in Memphis, or their more ancient ancestors, who made this place a reference point.

Mathematical apparatus of cartographers

But whoever they were, they skillfully mastered their craft. As soon as the researchers began to study the fragments of the map of the Turkish admiral that have come down to us, they faced the question of the authorship of its primary source. The Piri Reis map is the so-called portolan, a sea chart that allows you to build "lines between ports", that is, sail between port cities. In the 15th-16th centuries, such maps were much more perfect than land maps, but, as noted by one of the leading scientists in this field, A.E. Nordenskiöld, they did not develop. That is, the maps of the 15th century were of the same quality as the maps of the 14th century. This, from his point of view, indicates that the skill of cartographers was not acquired, but borrowed, that is, in other words, they simply redrawn older maps, which is natural in itself.

But what does not fit in the head is the accuracy of the constructions and the mathematical apparatus, without which these constructions simply cannot be performed. Let me give you just a few facts.

It is known that in order to build a geographical map, that is, to display a sphere on a plane, it is necessary to know the dimensions of this sphere, that is, the Earth. Even in ancient times Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the globe, but he did it with a large error. Until the 15th century, no one specified these data. However, a thorough study of the coordinates of objects on the Piri map indicates that the dimensions of the Earth were taken into account without error, that is, the compilers of the map had more accurate information about our planet at their disposal (not to mention the fact that they represented it as a ball). Researchers of the Turkish map also convincingly showed that the compilers of the mysterious ancient source were trigonometric (the Reuss map was drawn using planar geometry, where latitudes and longitudes are at right angles. But it was copied from a map with spherical trigonometry! Ancient cartographers not only knew that the Earth there is a ball, but they also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 km!) And cartographic projections that were not known to either Eratosthenes or even Ptolemy, and they theoretically could use the ancient maps stored in the Library of Alexandria. That is, the original source of the map is definitely more ancient.

Both Americas are shown on the map

The Piri Reis map is one of the first to show both Americas. It was compiled 21 years after the voyage of Columbus and the "official" discovery of America. And it marks not only the exact coastline, but also the rivers, and even the Andes. And this despite the fact that Columbus himself did not map America, having sailed only to the Caribbean!

The mouths of some rivers, in particular the Orinoco, are shown on the Piri Reis map with an "error": river deltas are not indicated. However, this is more likely not an error, but rather an expansion of the deltas over time, as was the case with the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia in the last 3500 years.

Columbus knew where he was going

Piri Reis claimed that Columbus knew where he was sailing, thanks to a book that fell into his hands. The fact that Columbus's wife was the daughter of the Grand Master of the Order of the Templars, which had already changed its name by that time, had significant archives of ancient books and maps, indicates possible path the acquisition of a mysterious book (today much has already been written about the Templar fleet and the high probability of their regular voyages to America).

There are many facts indirectly confirming that Columbus owned one of the maps that served as the source for the Piri Reis map. For example, Columbus did not stop ships at night, as was customary because of the fear of running into reefs in unknown waters, but went under full sail, as if he knew for sure that there would be no obstacles. When a riot began on the ships due to the fact that the promised land did not show up, he managed to convince the sailors to endure another 1000 miles and was not mistaken - exactly 1000 miles later the long-awaited shore appeared. Columbus carried a supply of glass ornaments with him, hoping to exchange them for gold from the Indians, as recommended in his book. Finally, each ship carried a sealed packet with instructions on what to do if the ships lost sight of each other during a storm. In a word, the discoverer of America knew well that he was not the first.

The Piri Reis map is not the only one

And the map of the Turkish admiral, the source for which was, among other things, the maps of Columbus, is not the only one of its kind. If you set out to compare the images of Antarctica on several maps compiled before its “official” discovery, as Charles Hapgood did, then there will be no doubt that there is a common source. Hapgood carefully compared the maps of Piri, Arantheus Finaus, Hadji Ahmed and Mercator, created at different times and independently of each other, and determined that they all used the same unknown source, which made it possible to depict the polar continent with the greatest certainty long before its discovery.

Most likely, we will no longer know for sure who and when created this primary source. But its existence, convincingly proven by the researchers of the Turkish admiral's map, testifies to the existence of some ancient civilization with a level of scientific knowledge comparable to modern, at least in the field of geography (the Piri map, as already mentioned, made it possible to clarify some modern maps). And this casts doubt on the hypothesis of a gradual linear progress of mankind in general and science in particular. One gets the feeling that the greatest knowledge about nature, as if obeying an unknown law, at a certain stage becomes available to mankind, in order to be lost later and ... be reborn again when the time comes. And who knows how many discoveries the next find will contain?

About the absence of many kilometers of ice thickness can be concluded here (at least near the coast)

Antarctic Lake Vanda. The lake is 5 km long and has a maximum depth of 69 m.

Huge ice-free expanses in Antarctica

This is what it looks like in satellite pictures. Territory approximately 30×50 km without ice and snow

The terrain of this place

I learned about this place from this video:

Some will say what's wrong here summer period the ice melted, the valleys were exposed. But the fact is that even in winter there is no, not only accumulated ice, but also snow.

Lake in winter

Land of Victoria. One of the McMurdo Dry Valleys

Agree, not an Antarctic landscape at all. Either this is a huge amount of water erosion worked, or these are faults in the earth's crust, or, as a version, a huge ancient quarry.

Wright Valley. Desert

Glaciers are trying to get into the valleys. But either there is not enough pressure from their main masses, or the temperature in the valley due to a geothermal anomaly is such that they melt, and thanks to this they allow rivers to appear. Yes, real rivers in Antarctica:

Onyx - The longest river in Antarctica.

Located in the Wright Valley in Victoria Land, the McMurdo Dry Valleys are characterized by an almost year-round absence of snow, high levels of solar insolation and fairly high summer temperatures. The length of the river is about 30 km. Lake Wanda flows in.
The water level in the river is subject to strong daily and seasonal fluctuations. Onyx has several tributaries and flows only during the late Antarctic summer (February, March). During the rest of the time, the river flow looks like a bare ribbon of ice. Sometimes for several years the river cannot reach Lake Wanda. But peculiar floods also happen, during one of them, in 1984, New Zealand rafters even went down the river.

There are no fish in the river, but there are microorganisms and algae that can be seen blooming.
Weather stations are located along the river, and at the mouth of the river is the New Zealand Wanda station.
(founded in 1968). It's interesting that Maximum temperature The air temperature at the station, noted on January 5, 1974, was +15.0 °C, which, apparently, is the temperature record for the entire Antarctica.

So why is there no snow and “multi-million-year” ice in these valleys (quoted)? Why is there so little snow here? It is hard to believe that the precipitation is blown away by winds that blow at a speed of 320 km / h. First of all - in the speed of such winds. Or maybe the waters of the flood could not overflow here for some reason and, accordingly, freeze? Or has the temperature of the earth's surface melted all the ice? The temperature of deep waters in 23 gr. Lake Wanda talks about it.

In the English-language wikipedia it is written that the lake. Vanda is a hypermineralized lake with salinity more than ten times that of sea ​​water, greater than the salinity of the Dead Sea, and perhaps even more than that of Lake Assal (Djibouti). Lake Vanda is also meromictic, which means that the deeper waters of the lake do not mix with the shallow waters. There are three different layers of water ranging from 23°C at the bottom, 7°C in the middle layer and 4-6°C in the upper layers. That is, the lake is geothermal.

Let's continue our further tour of Antarctica.

McMurdo Station - nearby on the island, on the shore of the bay. The hill looks like a waste heap. 77° 50′ 35.70″ S 166° 38′ 50.51″ E

Its height is higher than the level of neighboring mountains

The flat surface of the mountains

Why is Antarctica photographed by satellites in winter? Like the Arctic, by the way. But there are also summer photos in the panoramio service.

As can be seen from the photographs, McMurdo Station is a large contingent of researchers. Capital buildings, a lot of machinery and equipment. The station is located on an island in McMurdo Sound. And the central mountain of the island is a volcano:

The diameter of the larger crater is about 500m. But two geologically young craters are located in an older one. It is over 4 km in diameter.

This is Mount Erebus. Puffs of steam sometimes escape from the crater

As you can see, Antarctica lives a stormy geological life and in some places it is not at all what they show us.

Boucher's 18th-century map is said to accurately depict the continent of Antarctica as it was before it was covered in ice. In a broader sense, this means that an ancient civilization existed in Antarctica long before the continent was discovered at the beginning of the 19th century.

The mysterious map was created by the French geographer Philippe Boucher de la Neuville. The full title of this map is "Map of the southern lands between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Pole, showing new lands south of the Cape of Good Hope, discovered in 1739." The date on the map is September 3, 1739.

Map of Antarctica by Philippe Boucher, engraved on copper (63.5 x 48.3 cm).

Philippe Boucher de la Neuville was a cartographer and publisher of maps, as well as "the chief theoretical geographer of his generation." Boucher began his career as an assistant and apprentice to the cartographer Guillaume de Lisle. When de Lisle died in 1726, his publishing firm passed to Boucher, who married his teacher's daughter, becoming part of his family. In 1729 Boucher was appointed chief geographer of the king. AT next year he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences as Guillaume de Lisle's successor.

Portrait of Philippe Boucher.

Boucher used "geographical knowledge, scientific research, the journals of modern explorers and missionaries, and direct and astronomical observations" to create maps. He was the first to declare the existence of Alaska and the Bering Strait. However, not all of Boucher's assumptions were correct, in particular about the existence of a central Antarctic sea.

legends

Some researchers, based on Charles Hapgood's book Maps of Ancient Sea Kings. Evidence for the Existence of a Highly Developed Civilization in the Ice Age (1966) says that Boucher's map accurately depicts the subglacial topography of Antarctica. There are suggestions that Boucher used maps made by a highly advanced ancient civilization or even aliens.

Book cover by Charles Hapgood

"Cards of Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence for a Highly Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age". Photo: Amazon However, no one knows for sure what the relief of subglacial Antarctica actually looks like. At present, there is no way to confirm the veracity of the statement about the accuracy of the Boucher map. In addition, there are numerous differences between the maps of Boucher and Piri Reis, a Turkish admiral and cartographer.

The French inscriptions that cover Boucher's map provide clues as to how the map can be read and understood. For example, the words conjecturée (given a hypothesis) and soupçonnée (presumably) can be found on parts of the map showing the southern continent. This suggests that they were not copied from some ancient map. French explorer Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozières reported seeing many icebergs during his journey south. Therefore, Boucher suggested that the icebergs were in the south.

World map by French cartographer Philippe Boucher, 1753

There are two versions of Boucher's map: the second depicts a hypothetical Antarctica, while the first does not. The former version is more common and possibly earlier, while the latter is believed to reflect Boucher's later ideas. There are suggestions that another cartographer fraudulently published Boucher's map of Antarctica, or that it is a modern forgery.

look interesting video about the mysteries of Antarctica: