![]() ![]() Over billions of years, Earth's continents have shifted together and rifted apart. Plate tectonics is the process of large slabs of Earth's crust moving slowly around the planet, bumping into and pulling apart from one another. ![]() Due to plate tectonics, the exact location of the South Pole is constantly moving. This means the region experiences up to 24 hours of sunlight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter. From the South Pole, the sun is always above the horizon in the summer and below the horizon in the winter. In fact, the South Pole experiences only one sunrise (at the September equinox) and one sunset (at the March equinox) every year. Because the Earth rotates on a tilted axis as it revolves around the sun, sunlight is experienced in extremes at the poles. That temperature was recorded at the Russian Vostok Research Station, about 1,300 kilometers (808 miles) away. The coldest temperature recorded at the South Pole, -82.8 degrees Celsius (-117.0 degrees Fahrenheit), is still warmer than the coldest temperature ever recorded, -89.2 degrees Celsius (-128.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The South Pole is close to the coldest place on Earth. In fact, the warmest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole was a freezing -12.3 degrees Celsius (9.9 degrees Fahrenheit). This elevation makes the South Pole much colder than the North Pole, which sits in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Although land at the South Pole is only about a hundred meters above sea level, the ice sheet above it is roughly 2,700 meters (9,000 feet) thick. The South Pole is located on Antarctica, one of the Earth's seven continents. Its latitude is 90 degrees south, and all lines of longitude meet there (as well as at the North Pole, on the opposite end of the Earth). From the South Pole, all directions are north. It is the precise point of the southern intersection of the Earth's axis and the Earth's surface. The South Pole is the southernmost point on the Earth. ![]()
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