Polar plateau

The high, flat and cold landscape of the polar plateau at " Dome C "

The polar plateau is a large area in East Antarctica that is about a thousand kilometers in diameter and includes the South Pole . The average altitude is around 3000 meters.

The northern foothills of the plateau in Viktorialand were first entered in 1903 by a reconnaissance team of the Discovery Expedition under Robert Falcon Scott after crossing the Transantarctic Mountains via the Ferrar Glacier . In an attempt to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole, the southern group around Ernest Shackleton reached the central plateau for the first time during the Nimrod expedition in January 1909 after climbing the Beardmore Glacier .

The altitude combined with the southern latitude ensure that the lowest temperatures on earth are found here. The almost always blowing south winds increase the inhospitableness - so there is practically no life here, not even on a bacterial level.

Roald Amundsen named the whole plateau after King Håkon VII of Norway when he was the first person to reach the South Pole in 1911. However, the name was hardly used by non-Norwegians. As early as 1909, during the Nimrod expedition , its leader Ernest Shackleton named the plateau after King Edward VII of Great Britain in his failed attempt to reach the South Pole .

Polar plateau

See also