Day 13 · January 1, 2028 · The Antarctic Peninsula
You are surrounded by more frozen water than anywhere else on the planet, and you are standing in a desert.
A desert is defined by how much precipitation falls, not by heat or sand. Under 250 millimetres a year qualifies.
Much of the Antarctic interior gets less than fifty. That is drier than Death Valley.
Where all the ice came from
Almost nothing falls here. Almost nothing melts, either.
A few inches of snow a year, and none of it melting, builds an ice sheet over about 98 percent of the continent. In places it runs close to three miles deep.
About 90 percent of all the ice on earth is in that sheet.
The weight is hard to picture. Under it, the bedrock of Antarctica has been pressed down below sea level.
The coldest temperature ever recorded
The lowest temperature ever recorded on this planet was taken at Vostok Station in July 1983. Vostok sits in the middle of the East Antarctic plateau.
It was 128.6 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit.
Where your ship is sailing, in high summer, it will be somewhere near freezing. The peninsula is the mild corner of Antarctica, and it is the reason you can be here at all.
What that looks like on New Year’s Day
Bright light. Water like glass on a good morning. Mountains coming straight up out of the sea with glaciers hanging between them.
None of it looks like a desert. All of it is one.
Today is the last full day in the ice. Tomorrow the ship points north.
