South Pole: Geography of Earth's Southernmost Point

The Geographic South Pole is the southernmost point on Earth, located at exactly 90° south latitude in the heart of the Antarctic continent. It sits high on the East Antarctic Plateau at an elevation of about 2,835 meters (9,301 feet), resting on an ice sheet roughly 2,700 meters thick, even though the bedrock beneath lies near sea level. It is the point where Earth's axis of rotation meets the surface in the Southern Hemisphere, and from it, every direction points north.

The South Pole is one of the most remote, hostile, and scientifically important places on the planet. It is not a single fixed spot but rather several distinct "poles," and understanding the difference between them is the first step to understanding the geography of Earth's far south. This guide covers where the pole actually is, the ice sheet it rests on, its brutal climate, the research station that sits on it, the heroic era of exploration that first reached it, and how it compares to its northern counterpart.

The Four South Poles

Confusingly, there is more than one "South Pole," and each is defined differently:

• Geographic South Pole: The point at 90°S where Earth's rotational axis intersects the surface. This is the true South Pole and the one marked at the Amundsen-Scott station.
• South Magnetic Pole: The point where Earth's magnetic field points vertically upward. It wanders constantly and, remarkably, now lies off the coast of Antarctica in the Southern Ocean, more than 2,800 km from the geographic pole.
• South Geomagnetic Pole: The southern end of the axis of the idealized dipole that best models Earth's magnetic field. It sits inland near the Russian Vostok Station and moves only slowly.
• Southern Pole of Inaccessibility: The point on the continent farthest from any coastline, roughly 878 km from the geographic pole, marked by a Soviet-era station and a bust of Lenin still poking above the snow.

When people say "the South Pole," they almost always mean the Geographic South Pole. The magnetic and geomagnetic poles matter to navigators and space-weather scientists, while the pole of inaccessibility is largely a challenge for extreme adventurers.

The Ice Sheet and Elevation

The Geographic South Pole sits atop the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest mass of ice on Earth. Here the ice is around 2,700 meters (nearly 9,000 feet) thick, which is why the surface elevation reaches 2,835 meters even though the rock underneath is close to sea level. This is part of the reason the site is so cold: it is effectively a high-altitude desert of ice.

Because the ice is not stationary, neither is the marked pole. The entire sheet flows slowly toward the Weddell Sea at roughly 10 meters per year. To keep pace, staff reposition the official geographic marker every January 1, and each year's marker is a small, custom-designed brass or metal cap. A separate ceremonial South Pole, a mirrored globe ringed by the flags of the original Antarctic Treaty signatories, stays in a fixed nearby spot for photographs. The polar plateau itself is astonishingly flat and featureless, sloping almost imperceptibly and stretching white to the horizon in every direction. The nearest coastline lies about 1,300 km away. For a fuller picture of this frozen landscape, see our guides to the Antarctic ice sheet and the continent of Antarctica.

The Extreme Climate

The South Pole has one of the harshest climates anywhere on Earth. Its combination of high elevation, extreme latitude, and total isolation from the moderating influence of open ocean produces staggering cold.

• Average annual temperature: about -49°C (-56°F)
• Coldest recorded: -82.8°C (-117°F), on June 23, 1982
• Warmest recorded: around -12°C (10°F), a rare summer high
• Precipitation: almost none; the interior is classed as a polar desert

Even at the height of summer in December and January, temperatures rarely climb above -25°C. The air is also extremely thin. Because cold air is denser and the atmosphere compresses toward the poles, the physiological "effective altitude" at the South Pole is closer to 3,400 meters than its true 2,835 meters, and newcomers frequently suffer altitude sickness on arrival.

Driving much of the surface weather are katabatic winds, dense, cold air that drains downhill off the high interior plateau under gravity, sometimes reaching gale force on the slopes toward the coast. The South Pole is not, however, the single coldest spot on Earth: that record belongs to the higher Vostok and Dome A region, detailed in our roundup of the coldest temperatures ever recorded on Earth.

The pole also has the most extreme daylight cycle on the planet: a single sunrise and a single sunset each year. Around the September equinox the sun rises and does not set for roughly six months, spiraling slowly around the horizon and peaking at just 23.5° above it at the December solstice; around the March equinox it sinks below the horizon for the six-month polar night. The transitions are gradual, with weeks of lingering twilight. During the winter darkness, the pole is one of the finest places on Earth to watch the aurora australis, the southern lights, ripple in green, red, and violet across a sky untouched by any artificial glow.

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

The only permanent human presence at the pole is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, operated by the United States through the National Science Foundation. First established in 1957 for the International Geophysical Year, the current elevated station was completed in 2008. It stands on adjustable stilts so it can be jacked upward as blowing snow accumulates, and its aerodynamic shape helps scour snow away rather than let it bury the building.

Around 150 people live and work there during the summer research season, dropping to roughly 50 hardy "winterovers" through the sunless months. From about February to October no aircraft can reach the pole, leaving the winter crew completely cut off, an isolation so total it is studied as an analogue for long-duration spaceflight. Supplies arrive by ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules aircraft during the brief flying window. The station is one of several outposts across the continent covered in our guide to Antarctic research stations.

Science is the reason the station exists. The cold, dry, stable, high-altitude air makes the pole a world-class observatory. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory uses a full cubic kilometer of clear Antarctic ice, instrumented with 5,160 optical sensors, as a detector for ghostly neutrinos from deep space. The South Pole Telescope and the BICEP array study the cosmic microwave background, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang, hunting for clues about the universe's first instants. The station also records some of the cleanest baseline atmospheric and greenhouse-gas measurements on Earth.

The Race to the Pole: Amundsen and Scott

Reaching the South Pole was one of the defining feats of the "Heroic Age" of Antarctic exploration. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen won the race, arriving on December 14, 1911, with a lean, dog-sled-based expedition and careful use of skis and depots. Britain's Robert Falcon Scott reached the pole 34 days later, on January 17, 1912, only to find Amundsen's tent and flag already there. Tragically, Scott and his four companions all died on the return journey, undone by exhaustion, frostbite, and brutal weather just miles from a supply depot.

The station's name honors both men. It would be nearly half a century before humans returned to stay, when the 1957 station established a permanent scientific foothold at the bottom of the world.

Governance: The Antarctic Treaty

No country owns the South Pole. Antarctica is governed by the Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959 and in force since 1961, which sets the entire continent aside for peaceful, scientific use. The treaty bans military activity and nuclear testing, freezes all pre-existing territorial claims, and guarantees freedom of scientific research and international cooperation. The Geographic South Pole falls at the convergence of several overlapping, and legally suspended, territorial claims. In practice the pole belongs to science and to no flag, a status reflected in the ring of national flags at the ceremonial pole. The competing historical claims are explored further in our guide to Antarctica's territorial claims.

South Pole vs North Pole

The two poles are geographic opposites in more than location. The South Pole sits on a thick ice sheet resting on a solid continent nearly 2,835 meters above sea level, which makes it far colder than its northern twin. The North Pole, by contrast, lies in the middle of the Arctic Ocean on drifting sea ice only a few meters thick, with seawater below moderating its temperature. That is why Antarctica routinely records temperatures 20-30°C colder than the Arctic.

Wildlife differs too: penguins and seals inhabit the far south, while polar bears roam only the Arctic. Politically, the South Pole is unclaimed land held in trust by the Antarctic Treaty, whereas the seabed beneath the North Pole is contested by surrounding nations. For a side-by-side breakdown of both polar regions, see our Arctic vs Antarctic comparison.