There are no countries in Antarctica.
The ice can be more than 4 km thick in some places. This ice flows
off the continent and creates floating ice shelves over the ocean; these shelves break up and create icebergs. If Antarctica’s ice sheets melted, the world’s oceans would rise by 60-65 meters.
The Arctic region lies at the North Pole. It is a small, frozen ocean surrounded by the northern edges of Europe, Asia, and North America, whose flat, bleak landscape is known as the tundra. The region is a cold and hostile environment and few people live there. The Arctic Ocean, however, teems with wildlife.

These long cylindrical samples of Antarctica's ice, with dust and air bubbles trapped inside, can provide a wealth of information about the earth's climate over the past 10,000 years. If the scientist melted one of the ice cores, he could give you a drink of water that was frozen during the middle ages.

Its sea ice expands about 40,000 square miles per day, adding up to an extra 12 million square miles of ice around the land mass (the equivalent of 1.5 United States). In effect, it doubles the size of the continent. In summer the new ice breaks up and melts.

There are no indigenous populations of people on the frozen continent. Today, human habitation exists at a variety of science research stations placed by a number of countries. The freezing weather is an excellent location to study how the body and mind adapts to the cold. Scientists also drill for ice cores, which can provide a climate history of the region over thousands of years. The vast vegetation-free expanse makes an excellent place to search for meteorites; the dark rocks stand out easily on the white backdrop and