There have been extremely rare sightings of birds at or near the lifeless, frozen desert that is the South Pole; but they don’t stick around very long. The odd seagull or South Polar skua—a large scavenger bird—has been spotted nosing around research station dumps. Very odd, and obviously very lost. It’s assumed that these hapless creatures don’t survive the trip back.

The coldest temperature ever recorded on the planet, minus 128.6 F (-89 C), was logged at a point on the East Antarctica plateau called the “Pole of Relative Inaccessibility.” This cheery place lies at the farthest distance in all directions from the polar sea. Its only vertebrate inhabitants are Russian scientists.

Like national budgets, temperatures in this neighborhood aren’t easy to comprehend. Exposed skin flash-freezes, steel shatters when dropped, and the mere act of figuring out how cold it is requires some ingenuity. Mercury in a normal thermometer freezes solid at minus 39 F (-39 C). (They have to use alcohol.)

Record lows elsewhere on the planet hardly begin to compare. In Alaska, the temperature once dropped to minus 80 F (-62 C), and they thought that was cold. Siberia has registered minus 90 F (-68 C).

WHERE EXTREME IS NORMAL

It’s a somewhat different story in coastal areas of Antarctica, where temperatures are relatively balmy, at least for part of the year. A summer day in January might see the mercury rising to 35 F (2 C). The all-time high at McMurdo Station, a large research facility located on the coast of Ross Island, is 49 F (9 C). This is warm enough to support populations of seals, penguins, and the continent’s largest groups of permanent inhabitants: midges and tiny two-winged flies.

Farther inland, most people would consider even the normal temperatures extreme. At the Pole, temperatures during the warmest summer month hover around minus 15 F (-26 C). They drop to an average of roughly minus 80 F (-62 C) on a winter’s night. (Of course, there are no winter’s days.) In a storm, wind-chill factors become astronomical.

Literally, this is too cold to snow. Which raises an interesting question. Seventy percent or more of all the world’s fresh water is locked up in the Antarctic ice cap. How did it get there? A working hypothesis is that the ice cap is the accumulation of eons of snow blown in from coastal areas, where it does snow copiously. The Pole also receives small amounts of precipitation in the form of ice crystals or tiny snow granules.

The possibility that “global warming” could someday cause the enormous ice cube that is the Ross Ice Shelf to melt is one of the most active interests of the scientists from many nations who work in Antarctica around the year.

If all the ice in Greenland were to suddenly become water, the world’s oceans would rise by only about 30-feet (9-meters). A meltdown of Antarctic ice would result in a 210-foot (64-meter) increase—enough to inundate the world’s major coastal cities, as well as eliminate low-lying regions, including virtually the entire state of Florida.

Another global warming fun fact: If all the glaciers in the world dribbled away, including the ones on mountains, oceans would rise by 250 feet (76 meters). Anyone who’s been putting off a sight-seeing visit to the U.S. capital should be advised that in this case, only about half of the Washington Monument would be left at low tide.

THE DARK SEASON

Antarctica, with its relatively uncontaminated environment, is an ideal laboratory for scientists from 25 nations. They conduct various kinds of research under a 1959 treaty: In addition to global warming, projects involve ozone depletion, glaciology, astronomy, geology, meteorology, biology, and paleobotany.

At the Pole itself, The United States’ Amundsen-Scott station is named after Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who reached the Pole in 1911, and Robert Falcon Scott, the British runner-up. Scott perished on his return trip.

This year 27 scientists are holed up at Amundsen-Scott for the long, dark winter in a cluster of small prefabricated buildings enclosed by an aluminum geodesic dome about 40 feet (12 meters) high and 150 feet (46 meters) in diameter.

Theirs is a life of isolation, strictly enforced by the weather. In June, 1999, the station’s physician discovered she had a breast tumor. Her evacuation was delayed because conditions wouldn’t allow a plane to land. She had to settle for a hazardous air-drop of medical supplies.

When gathered around the stove before bedtime, veterans of these stations sometimes tell newcomers a cautionary tale. It seems that once upon a time, one of their colleagues at McMurdo was trapped inside a one-room shack with three others during a blizzard. Too bashful to answer nature’s call in their presence, he ventured outside, where he was immediately blinded and disoriented by blowing snow. He was found afterwards only a few steps from the door, frozen to death.

It may just be a tall tale. But similar things have happened in Antarctic whiteouts.

The newbies get the point.

Eye in the Sky is a weekly series that brings you the story behind the headlines using satellite imagery, remote sensing, aerial photography, and maps. This feature is developed by National Geographic News with the sponsorship of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and Earth-Info. Check out maps and imagery at http://www.earth-info.org.