antarticaa

Antarctica, as everyone knows, is mostly covered in ice—mostly being the key word. Scientists have assumed that about a little less than one percent of Antarctica’s rock is ice-free. A new survey corrects this estimate, showing just how frozen this dark continent truly is.

In a new paper published in Cryosphere, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey have shown that a minuscule 0.18 percent of the continent isn’t buried in snow and ice. Scientists will now use this dramatically improved figure as a baseline when monitoring the effects of climate change on the continent.