A vast area of the Bellingshausen Sea should be covered by sea ice by now, with one expert calling the loss of ice ‘depressing’
It’s winter in Antarctica, when sea ice expands rapidly around the continent peaking in September.
But satellite observations showed the Bellingshausen Sea – on the west side of the Antarctic peninsula and which by June would usually be covered by ice – was almost completely ice free.
How does Antarctica have a West Coast?
It’s surrounded by ocean so why wouldn’t it? While there’s technically only one continuous northern coast, you can split that into a western and a eastern coast. What Antarctica doesn’t have is a southern coast.
Because it’s uniquely on the bottom of the earth unlike every other continent where defining east and west is trivial.
I think their objection is defining west or east to a circle on the south pole.
If I drop a hoola hoop on the south pole, what part of the hoola hoop is the western part? Which part is eastern? North and South are easy.
Fair enough. I just figured… there’s the 0° meridian and everything on the left of it is west and everything on the right is east. Same principle would apply to the hoola hoop except it would be hard to determine unless someone was nice enough to draw the line on the ground like they did in Greenwich.
To me north and south would be weirder because the south would be inside the hoop and north would be the edges