Antarctica is classified as a desert because it receives less precipitation than the Sahara, yet it holds about 70 per cent of the planet's fresh water, locked in an ice sheet averaging over two kilometres thick across the continent

Antarctica is classified as a desert because it receives less precipitation than the Sahara, yet it holds about 70 per cent of the planet's fresh water, locked in an ice sheet averaging over two kilometres thick across the continent

The South Pole gets less snow in a year than Phoenix gets rain. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where the United States has kept people alive continuously since 1957, the annual precipitation averages under 80 millimetres of water equivalent — thinner than the drizzle that falls on the Sonoran Desert. That is the paradox at the bottom of the world: Antarctica is a desert by every meteorological definition, and yet it holds roughly 70 p…