The Antarctica is actually a desert. It is the only continent on the earth without a river or a lake.
The Antarctica is all ice all year round. The warmest temperature ever recorded there is zero, at the South Pole. Explorers (控险家) used to think that a place so cold would have a heavy snowfall. But less than ten inches of snow falls each year. That is less than half an inch of water. Ten times that much moisture (水分) falls in parts of the Sahara.
The little snow that falls in Antarctica never melts (融化). It continues to pile up deeper year after year and century after century when the snow gets to be about eighty feet deep, it is turned to ice by the weight of snow above it.
The snow turns to ice when______.