The Antarctica is actually a desert.
The Antarctica is all ice all the year. The warmest temperature ever recorded there is zero at the South Pole. Explorers(探险家) used to think that a place so cold would have a heavy snowfall. But less than ten inches of snowfalls 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 and 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 the snow above it.
1. Antarctica is called a desert because it _____.
A. is sandy
B. has the same temperature as a desert
C. has little moisture
D. all of the above
2. The Antarctica has _____.
A. ten times as much moisture as the Sahara
B. the same amount of moisture as the Sahara
C. about one-tenth the moisture of the Sahara
D. none of these
3. The snow in Antarctica is very deep because it _____.
A. never stops falling
B. piles up year after year
C. never melts
D. Both B and C
4. The best title for this passage is “_____”
A. A Strange Continent
B. The Antarctica—An Ice Desert
C. Snowfall at the South Pole
D. The World’s Greatest Desert
