Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink- that is Antarctica for you. In the harsh interior of Antarctica, temperature can fall to minus 70 degrees Celsius. Add the wind chill factor, the felt temperature due to the wind, and things get very clod indeed. Less liquid water available to organisms, because nearly all of it is ice and snow. This means that Antarctica is drier than a desert. In some interior regions, there are dry valleys where ice and snow are absent. The bare rock surface seem lifeless, but they harbor communities of extremely hardy cyanobacteria and algae.
In the peninsula, the long narrow piece of land projecting out into the sea, temperature do rise above freezing point in the summer. The ice thaws. So, land plants and animals can eke out a living there.
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