why Antarctica is so much more colder than the Arctic?
In: Planetary Science
Comparing apples to apples, it isn’t.
The yearly average, east-west average temperature at sea level near Antarctica is almost the same as at the equivalent latitude in the Arctic. See Figure 5.7 [here](http://weatherclimatelab.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/chap5.pdf): the temperature at say 65 degrees south (near the coast of Antarctica) averages -5 C, identical to 65 north (northern Alaska).
But the South Pole is much much colder than that, and the figure I linked shows why: it’s at 10,000 feet (3 km) altitude. **South Pole station sits on top of a giant continent-sized mountain of ice, and it’s cold on top of a mountain.** You can see in the linked figure that the temperature at 90 south at 680 mbar (the pressure-height of South Pole Station) averages -30 C, almost identical to the North Pole at the same altitude.
It’s nothing to do with ocean currents or whatever: it’s just a matter of altitude.
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