South Pole
Southernmost waters of the World Ocean, encircling Antarctica south of 60° S.
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The South Pole, also known as the Geographic or Terrestrial South Pole, is the southernmost point on Earth, located where the planet’s axis of rotation meets its surface in the Southern Hemisphere. It lies antipodally to the North Pole and defines geodetic latitude 90° South. At this point, all directions point north, all lines of longitude converge (making its longitude undefined), and no time zone is assigned, so any time can be used locally. Along tight latitude circles, clockwise is east and counterclockwise is west.
The South Pole sits at the center of the Southern Hemisphere on the continent of Antarctica, atop a barren, windswept, icy plateau at an altitude of 2,835 meters above sea level, roughly 1,300 kilometers from the nearest open sea. The ice sheet covering the pole is about 2,700 meters thick, meaning the underlying land surface is near sea level. This ice sheet moves roughly 10 meters per year toward the Weddell Sea, so the geographic marker must be repositioned annually.
The United States Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, established in 1956, has been permanently staffed since then. A new marker stake is placed each New Year’s Day in a ceremony, and a nearby Ceremonial South Pole features a metallic sphere and flags of Antarctic Treaty signatories. The first explorers to reach the pole were Roald Amundsen in December 1911 and Robert Falcon Scott shortly after; Amundsen’s tent, now buried under snow and ice, is a designated historic monument. An Argentine flagpole erected in 1965 is also a historic site.
Quick Facts
- Location
- Continent of Antarctica
Facts from the source article.
Physical Extent and the Quest for the Deepest Point
The Southern Ocean spans roughly 21.96 million square kilometers, making it the second-smallest of the five major oceanic divisions. Situated south of the 60th parallel south, it encircles Antarctica and is smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans yet larger than the Arctic. In early February 2019, the Five Deeps Expedition deployed multibeam sonar to pinpoint the ocean's deepest location at 60° 28' 46"S, 025° 32' 32"W, reaching a depth of 7,434 meters.
Expedition leader Victor Vescovo, piloting the crewed submersible DSV Limiting Factor, descended to the bottom on February 3, 2019, becoming the first person to visit this point. He proposed naming the site the "Factorian Deep" after his vessel. This achievement marked a milestone in understanding the physical extremes of a body of water that had long resisted precise characterization, and it underscored how much of the Southern Ocean's seafloor remained unexplored until very recently.
A Century of Shifting Boundaries
The question of where the Southern Ocean begins has generated more than a century of geographic disagreement. When the International Hydrographic Bureau convened its First International Conference in July 1919, it set the stage for defining ocean borders, and the first edition of Limits of Oceans and Seas followed in 1928. That initial delineation used land-based limits, tracing from Cape Horn in Chile around Antarctica to Broughton Island in New Zealand. By the 1937 second edition, northern limits had shifted southward, and much of the boundary no longer touched land masses.
Since 1953, the ocean was omitted entirely from the official publication, leaving local hydrographic offices to draw their own lines. In 2000, the IHO revived the definition as waters south of the 60th parallel, but this has never been formally adopted due to unrelated naming disputes, such as the Sea of Japan controversy. The 2002 draft edition remains in use by organizations including the CIA World Factbook and Merriam-Webster, while the Australian Government simply regards the ocean as lying immediately south of its own coastline.
The Engine of Global Circulation
The Southern Ocean is not merely a body of water but a critical component of Earth's climate machinery. Its overturning circulation forms the second half of the global thermohaline system, complementing the better-known Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The full importance of this role was only ascertained in the late twentieth century, which is partly why the IHO waited until 2000 to formally recognize the ocean as a distinct entity. However, climate change is already disrupting this system.
Warming has increased ocean stratification, and scientists warn the circulation could slow substantially, pass a tipping point, or even collapse entirely. Such a collapse would unfold over centuries but would have severe consequences for global weather patterns and the marine ecosystems that depend on the ocean's mixing. Even now, ongoing warming is visibly altering the biological communities that inhabit these southern waters, making the health of this circulation a matter of planetary concern.
From Balboa's Naming to Modern Recognition
The name "Southern Ocean" carries a surprisingly layered history. The earliest known use of the term came from Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who coined it to describe the Pacific Ocean after approaching it from Panama. A 1745 British Act of Parliament still referenced "the Western and Southern Ocean of America" in a prize for discovering a Northwest Passage.
By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, various authors applied the name to waters encircling the unknown polar regions, but their proposed northern limits varied wildly, from 40 degrees south in John Payne's 1796 usage to 50 degrees in the 1827 Edinburgh Gazetteer. James Cook's 1770s voyages proved that open waters surrounded the southern latitudes, yet geographers continued to debate whether these waters constituted a separate ocean or simply the southern extensions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. It was not until June 2021 that the National Geographic Society officially recognized the Southern Ocean, ending a long period in which its maps showed the other three oceans extending all the way to Antarctica.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who first reached the South Pole and when?
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his small team were the first humans to stand at the Geographic South Pole on 14 December 1911, beating the rival British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. The first aircraft to fly over the point came nearly two decades later, piloted by Richard Evelyn Byrd and Bernt Balchen in November 1929.
What is the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station?
It is the United States research outpost built at the Pole during the 1956–1957 International Geophysical Year and has been permanently staffed ever since. Because the underlying ice sheet drifts, the physical marker stake is repositioned each year to keep it over the true axis point.
Where is the South Pole located geographically?
It lies on the continent of Antarctica, far from any coastline, and is defined purely by the geometry of Earth's rotation rather than by any visible landmark. Its coordinates are 90° S latitude, with longitude technically undefined at that exact point.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: South Pole (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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