Kerguelen Plateau in the context of "Heard Island and McDonald Islands"

The Antarctic (/ænˈtɑːr(k)tɪk/, US also /æntˈɑːr(k)tɪk/; commonly /ænˈɑːrtɪk/) is the polar region of Earth that surrounds the South Pole, lying within the Antarctic Circle. It is diametrically opposite of the Arctic region around the North Pole.

The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and other island territories located on the Antarctic Plate or south of the Antarctic Convergence. The Antarctic region includes the ice shelves, waters, and all the island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence, a zone approximately 32 to 48 km (20 to 30 mi) wide and varying in latitude seasonally. The region covers some 20 percent of the Southern Hemisphere, of which 5.5 percent (14 million km) is the surface area of the Antarctica continent itself. All of the land and ice shelves south of 60°S latitude are administered under the Antarctic Treaty System.

The Antarctic plate is a tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and some remote islands in the Southern Ocean and other surrounding oceans. After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to its present isolated location, causing the continent to develop a much colder climate. The Antarctic plate is bounded almost entirely by extensional mid-ocean ridge systems. The adjoining plates are the Nazca plate, the South American plate, the African plate, the Somali plate, the Indo-Australian plate, the Pacific plate, and, across a transform boundary, the Scotia and South Sandwich plates.

The Antarctic plate has an area of about 60,900,000 km (23,500,000 sq mi). It is Earth's fifth-largest tectonic plate.