Joe

WHY CAN'T PENGUINS FLY?

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Penguins eat fish. The fish they eat swim really deep underwater, so flying isn’t useful because they can’t catch deep water fish from the sky. Penguins also can’t fly because they are too heavy for the size of their wings. Their bone structure is built for warmth not flight. An average penguin would have to flap its wings 35 times a second to get off the ground, about the same amount of times as a Humming bird. The small wings are great for diving underwater, whereas big wings would create so much drag, which makes them very fast swimmers. When they are on ice or ground they usually waddle or slide on their bellies, which is much less energy wasting then flapping their tiny wings.

DID DINOSAURS EVER LIVE IN ANTARTICA?

Yes dinosaurs used to live in Antarctica when it was closer to the equator, therefor making it a lot warmer and a more stable environment for them to roam there. When the tectonic plates moved so did the dinosaurs. When they moved it got colder and colder so as the temperature dropped so did the dinosaurs. Before long they were all dead and the bones aren’t there, they’re down underwater.

WILL ANTARTICA MELT IN THE NEXT 30 YEARS?

There is no saying for sure what will happen in the future but there is a very strong chance will melt but not in the next 30 years. It may melt in the next 300-450 years time, but that still isn’t certain either. Over the last few recent years the ice on both poles has been declining at an alarming rate. Some say its global warning others say that it’s just what happens over time, then there are some who don’t even think Antarctica’s melting.

WHAT ARE ANTARTICA’S COLDEST AND WARMEST TEMPERATURES?

Average temperatures in Antarctica’s interior get down to -70 degrees Celsius during the winter months and -35 degrees Celsius in the warmer months of the year. The coastal temperatures are much warmer, with a range of -15 to -32° in winter and -5 to 5° in the summer. The highest ever recorded temperature in Antarctica was 14.6° on the 5th of January, 1974 at Hope Bay, Vanda Station. The Australian Antarctica Territory, AAT, experienced the World’s lowest temperature when -89.6° was recorded on the 21st of July, 1983 at the Vostock Station at an elevation of 3488 metres.

WHAT IS THE LARGEST ICEBERG IN THE ANTARTIC REGION? HOW ARE ICEBERGS FORMED? It was the one that broke free from the Ross iceshelf in the year 2000. It was 295 kilometers long and 37kilometers wide, with a surface area of 11,000 sqkm above water and was ten times bigger underwater. That’s 110,000 sqkm altogether! Icebergs are pieces of ice that have broken off glaciers that have been moving towards the shore line for the past hundreds of years, then break off and float out to the middle of the ocean. They stay here until they melt in the warmer waters. Glaciers are formed in polar regions where snowfall lasts for years, centuries or even millenniums without entirely melting. It then compresses into ice, therefor creating a glacier.

HOW THICK IS THE ICE IN ANTARCTICA? The ice cap that covers Antarctica is more than 2100 meters thick, more than 2 kilometres. This is where most of the world’s fresh water supply is. If it melted completely it would raise sea levels by 61m. The average thickness of the ice in Antarctica is about 1.6km thick. About 98% of Antarctica is covered with ice. According to NASA the West Antarctica ice sheet rests on land which is well below sea level. The deepest known ice rests 2,555m below sea level where the ice is over 4km thick.