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According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), polar deserts are "areas with annual precipitation less than 250 millimeters and a mean temperature during the warmest month of less than 10°C. Polar deserts on the Earth cover nearly 5 million square kilometers and are mostly bedrock or gravel plains. Sand dunes are not prominent features in these deserts, but snow dunes occur commonly in areas where precipitation is locally more abundant. Temperature changes in polar deserts frequently cross the freezing point of water. This 'freeze-thaw' alternation forms patterned textures on the ground, as much as 5 meters in diameter."
Berry Lyons is the director of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State, and a member of the prestigious Explorer's Club. He has spent the past 15 years working in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, a.k.a. a "polar desert." Lyons explains: "The dry valleys are just beautiful, it's like being in southern Utah, except with a minus 20 temperature regime, with ice and snow up high above you. It's just a beautiful, beautiful place. In the Antarctic polar desert, only microscopic plants can survive the freezing, dry temperatures, and five-and-a-half months without sun. That's why this part of the world has been used as an analog to study possible life on Mars."
Click here for a a view of "Commonwealth Glacier and Lake Fryxell from the worm farms at F6. Precipitation in Antarctica is so low, it is technically a large desert."
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