in the world’. A US seasonal field camp on Byers Peninsula was wrecked by storm and emergency evacuated in February 2009. Whiteouts are common, and blizzards can occur at any time of the year. Temperatures are rather constant, with diurnal temperature variations seldom exceeding a few degrees. Wind chill temperatures could be up to lower than actual ones. The highest daily temperature recorded on the island is (measured at the Chilean Base), and the lowest is (at the Spanish base). Following a period of warming during the second half of the 20th century, the Antarctic Peninsula region has experienced a period of cooling in the early 21st century. For Livingston Island this cooling has reached over the 12-year period 2004–2016, and for the summer average temperatures over the same period. That has resulted in a longer snow cover duration in the coastal ice-free areas, which could be exemplified by comparing the January snow line configurations shown on the 1996 and 2016 maps of the Bulgarian base. It can rain or snow on Livingston Island at any time of the year, although in the winter most precipitation occurs in the form of snow. Flora and fauna Charles Darwin, 23 years old as he started his biological research in neighbouring Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and the Falklands in 1832, noted (with some inaccuracy in his distances): The coastal areas of Livingston Island are home to a selection of vegetation and animal life typical for the northern Antarctic Peninsula region, including fur, elephant, Weddell, and leopard seals, and chinstrap, gentoo, Adélie and macaroni penguins. Several other seabirds, including skuas, southern giant petrel and Antarctic terns, nest on the island during the summer months. Spanish biological research has identified 110 species of lichens and 50 of mosses on a territory of just at the Spanish base on Hurd Peninsula, the highest species diversity recorded from any single Antarctic locality. History It was only during the nineteenth century that any land was discovered in what is now the ‘political’ territory of Antarctica, and that land happened to be Livingston Island. The English merchant William Smith in his brig , while sailing to Valparaíso in early 1819, strayed from his route south of Cape Horn and on 19 February sighted Williams Point, the northeast extremity of Livingston. That was the first land ever discovered south of 60° south latitude, in what is now the Antarctic Treaty