AntarcticDoctor

Weâ??re all sharing rooms at the moment, so I have no space to work on my PC.  Iâ??ve set myself up in the upstairs physics lab in A-block, with a window that faces due south.  The view right now is spectacular â?? the sun is behind low clouds about 20° above the horizon, lighting up the peaks beyond Vesles, while the wind picks up snow and ice dust and blows them through the rocks.  Amazing.

The ice covers the continent, a giant several kilometers thick in places.  It is formed on the high plateau inland and moves as enormous glaciers towards the distant sea, where sections break off each summer – the birth of ice-bergs  At Blaskiment Bukta, where the SA expedition unloads cargo and vehicles destined for SANAE IV, the shelf is still half a kilometer in thickness.  Averaging 50m height above the water, it extends more than 80 km out to sea beyond the continent’s edge.  In winter, the sea freezes for hundreds of kilometers further – Antarctica doubles in size.