McMurdo – dry deserts of Antarctica, photo, description, map
The name “Antarctica” immediately evokes the association of eternal snow and ice blocks with a thickness of about 4 kilometers in some places on the vast expanse of the white continent. Everything seems to be saturated with moisture here. But no matter how paradoxical it sounds, it is precisely among this abundance of snow that the driest deserts of our planet are located. Antarctica is located at the south pole, but despite this geographical position, it is the coldest continent in the world, where in January the temperature reaches -93 degrees Celsius.
scientific sensation
Even employees of polar research stations cannot be there during this period, but work only in summer at -25. The expanses of Antarctica resemble the lunar plains, where man is a rare guest. Polar explorers determined the boundaries of the dry McMurdo deserts of the icy continent: Victoria, Wright and Teyler.
This discovery became a scientific sensation, established by American navigators in the last century, ahead of Russian scientists by only a few days. Studies have shown that 2% of the territory of Antarctica, not occupied by snow and ice, is the driest place on the planet where there has not been rain for two million years. The second place in terms of dryness on Earth is the Chilean Atacama Desert, in some areas of its precipitation there have been no more than 400 years, and the entire territory of the desert was covered by an average annual precipitation of 0.1 mm.
Climatic conditions
Along with the fact that the driest deserts are located in Antarctica, this continent is considered the wettest and windiest place, since it is here that 70% of the fresh water reserves of our entire planet are concentrated in the form of huge ice deposits.
The dryness of the Antarctic deserts is explained by the presence in these zones of constant katabatic winds, the speed of which is catastrophically huge and amounts to 320 kilometers per hour. They are named so because of the speed of their sliding down the slopes under the influence of gravity. In such conditions, it is simply impossible for moisture to linger, the snow immediately turns into a gaseous state, so there is no ice, although the longest river of Antarctica, Onyx, flows almost next to the dry deserts, and Lake Vida is located a little further.
Even discovering these deserts in the midst of white silence was an inhumanly difficult task: a strong frost paired with a crazy wind created unbearable research conditions for polar explorers. The fact of identifying dry places and the causes of their occurrence was not just a scientific discovery, but a real heroic feat of enthusiastic researchers.
Scientific observations of dry valleys continue to be actively carried out, and it has already been established that their space, in terms of external and climatic features, is very reminiscent of Martian. It is no coincidence that NASA is testing the Viking landers here, hoping to soon use them on the red planet.
Ice lakes of the dry desert
On the territory of the dry valley of Wright, frozen lakes were found, in which the water has a very high concentration of salt, exceeding the salinity of the Dead Sea. But even in it there are previously unstudied microorganisms and bacteria, the main component of which are the elements of sulfur and iron. Rocks save them from death, and during the melting of glaciers, bacteria, coming out, color the water red, creating the impression of a Bloody Falls, which can be observed in another dry valley – Taylor.
The discovery of such protozoa once again indirectly convinces scientists of the correctness of the theory about the possibility of life of living organisms on Mars. Another sign of the similarity of the dry deserts of Antarctica with the mysterious planet is the reddish-rusty color of their surface, on which there is no vegetation and no animals.
Dry desert research
Why is the life of polar birds and animals possible in the ice, but in dry valleys, where there is no snow, it is not? Just the excessive dryness of the atmosphere does not allow animals and plants to live here. But, as zoologists and biologists find out, this was not always the case.
Such a conclusion was made by them when they began to find the mummified remains of seals, perfectly preserved in dry air in the dry desert of Victoria. Presumably, these mammals lived here about 3000 years ago. Consequently, during this period, the climatic and geographical conditions of existence changed in the areas now called dry deserts.
The polar researchers of Antarctica are now struggling with this problem, they put forward various theories of the reasons for the change in the climatic zones of the ice continent, but so far there is no direct answer to these questions. Antarctica continues to be a mysterious, little-studied continent, so research expeditions do not stop their work, despite the harsh, inhumanly difficult conditions for people to stay here even during the Antarctic “summer” season, when the air temperature is -25 Celsius.
Antarctic tourism
But even here, in the land of eternal cold, tourist cruises are possible. For example, such a trip is planned on the ship “L Austral” to celebrate the New Year from December 29, 2015 to January 8, 2016. For those who can take part in this fantastic cruise, there will be the most unusual New Year's holiday among the icy silence of icebergs, eternal snows, among which the red-brown expanses of dry valleys are lost. One can imagine the delight of travelers watching through the portholes a colony of king penguins or fur seals, peacefully living on ice floes.
The magnificent luxury ship will sail from the Argentine port of Ushuaia at 18.30 on December 29th. The port city is located on the very edge of Argentina and is the capital of Tierra del Fuego – the National Park of the state. From its inspection, the journey of 190 tourists will begin, who wished to take part in such an exotic voyage, which will allow them to visit the fairy-tale kingdom of the Snow Queen and see with their own eyes the dazzlingly severe beauty of the icy halls of the mysteriously impregnable mainland.
More information about cruises to Antarctica in our article.