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So, How Is Antarctica Higher Than Mt. Everest

As the driest continent, Antarctica is actually a place of low precipitation (rain, snow) but intense cold. In general, the air is much colder than the ocean water. The ocean water is usually between a +5 and -2 degrees Centigrade but the air may be well below -2 degrees Centigrade. It is like a desert (in the sense that there is little precipitation) however; any precipitation that does fall rarely melts and adds to the polar ice cap. The south polar ice cap gets only 2 inches of precipitation each year (this is more than some deserts get). The accumulated ice never melts, is over 15,000 feet thick in some areas, and depresses the continental land mass under its weight (over 2,000 feet in some areas). The bottom of this ice pack may be over 100,000 years old and holds a record (layer by layer) of the history of earth with each layer.

As layers of frozen snow and ice crystals build up (left) (from any moisture in the air), the pressure from the cap pushes out toward the ocean, squeezing the ice between a few of the tall mountains that still protrude. In many areas this ice movement is much like a river (although in slow motion as flowing ice rather than flowing water) and called a glacier. Usually the glaciers meet the ocean as tidewater glaciers or as ice shelves. Although over 98 percent of the continent of Antarctica is covered in ice there are a few areas without ice (some unique dry valleys where there has been no precipitation for 2 million years, and along some of the coastlines during the summer melt). If all the ice in Antarctica were to melt, the oceans would rise 200 feet!! As a result, the continent of Antarctica would rebound (rise) without the weight of the ice and the world would be a very different place. The presence of all the permanent ice in Antarctica makes it the highest continent, with the average elevation at 7,100 feet and large areas in the interior over 13,000 feet. The ice sheet thins as it reaches the edges of the continent melting back during summer and exposing rocky beaches and headlands, or forming ice shelves and tidewater glaciers.