Antarctica
Antarctica is a three-part BBC documentary series narrated by Jo Unwin, following scientists who explore Antarctica's polar ice sheet. Antarctica's polar ice sheet is the highest, coldest, windiest, driest and most unforgiving place on earth. Dry as the Sahara Desert with less than 5cm of snow a year it is also numbingly cold. The average temperature near the South Pole is minus 49 degrees Centigrade, and winds reach over 200Km an hour. In this series scientists uncover how life forms have adapted to life in the freezer, what created Antarctica, and what controls the movement of ice.
| Episode 1 - The Ice Lives |
Episode 1 - The Ice Lives
The success of life in a landscape as alien as any on this planet is a biological aberration. It hints at the possibility of extraterrestrial life as it provides intriguing insights into the limits of living systems.
Episode 2 - The Ice Forms
The mystery of what formed Antarctica has obsessed explorers. Piecing together evidence from rock exposed above the ice, geologists have come up with a theory that could predict how it will change in the future.
Episode 3 - The Ice Melts
The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is the last Marine Ice Sheet on earth, and how it responds to warming past and present will determine the fate of great tranches of coast from Miami to Essex. "Complete collapse of the Ice Sheet would raise sea levels by six meters".
| Related Links |
| Antarctica - wikipedia Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. |
| Life in the Freezer This is a BBC nature documentary series presented by David Attenborough, tracing the seasonal cycle of Antarctica and human exploration of the continent. |
| Frozen Planet This is a nature documentary series, co-produced by the BBC, the Discovery Channel and The Open University, focusing on life and the environment in both the Arctic and Antarctic. |
| Planet Earth - Ice Worlds This episode looks at the polar regions (the Arctic and the Antarctic) where have the greatest seasonal extremes and life is heavily influenced by the advance and retreat of the ice. |