I got carried away, here’s 10 polar facts…
? Antarctica is the largest desert in the world. Seems odd with all that ice around but it hardly ever snows there, and the ice that is there has accumulated over about a million years.
? Contrary to what many people think, there’s more to Antarctica than just ice. Grass has started growing there in recent years and there are a number of small lakes and rivers. Lake Vanda is the largest of the lakes and for much of the year it has a thick layer of ice covering it, the ice is so clear that you can see straight through it. What’s more, the water is quite warm at the bottom of the lake, typically about 22°C. Lake Vanda even has it’s own swimming club.
? It’s well known that polar bears inhabit the Arctic region and penguins live in Antarctica but these animals don’t have to live in cold places. In fact, there are several species of penguin that are found in many parts of the world including the Tropics. Similarly, polar bears live quite happily in zoos that are a long way from the Arctic.
? Talking of penguins and polar bears… The bears often struggle to find food as it’s hard to come by in many parts of the Arctic, but if you were to move them to Antarctica they’d thrive. The penguins have no natural enemies, if they saw a polar bear they just stand and watch until it ate them.
? Glaciers around the world are on the move and in the Arctic some of them are moving at a record breaking pace. The fastest move at up to 80 metres per day, several have been measured at more than 40 metres per day.
? Many glaciers aren’t solid ice, you can often find streams flowing inside a glacier and some of them ‘float’ on a layer of water. The streams start out as normal streams on the top of the glacier then, where there’s a fault, they erode their way down into the heart of a glacier creating a moulin (sink hole). These can be hundreds of metres deep and sometimes the streams run lengthways through the ice. Some of the water reaches the base of the glacier, the pressure stops it melting and as a result the entire glacier can slide along on a bed of water, something known as basal sliding.
? When you stand on the snow or ice and look at it, it appears to be white, this is because white light from the Sun is being reflected off it. If you climb inside a glacier they’re blue, and some of the glaciers have huge blue caverns inside them that have been carved out by flowing water.
? You know that cows give birth to calves, did you know that glaciers also give berth to calves. When polar glaciers reach the sea large chunks fall off them, this process is known as calving.
? The amount of ice in Antarctica hardly changes but in the Arctic there’s a huge difference between the size of ice cover in winter and summer. Last year more than three quarters of the Arctic melted, at the end of the summer melting season there was less than 3.5 million square kilometres of ice left, six months later at the end of the Arctic winter there was more than 14 million square kilometres.
? We think of the magnetic north pole as being a fixed place - the point where Earth’s lines of magnetism converge and point downward into the Earth. But the north pole moves. Each day it travels about 80km and returns to close to it’s starting point, but day by day it’s moving eastwards and soon it will leave Canadian territory and enter the Russian part of the Arctic.
Due to the extreme cold, there is little liquid water for much of the year. Plants can do with less liquid water if there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. http://co2science.org/data/plant_growth/...
In the Arctic, there is an inverse correlation between sea ice extent and ocean surface temperature, but not a very good one. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3...
In the Antarctic, there is a direct correlation between sea ice extent and ocean surface temperature, but it is even worse. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3...
Earth's albedo is partly determined by the extent of the sea ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
The infrared light emitted from the polar regions is lower intensity and longer wavelengths that the radiation emitted from lower latitudes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black_...
The sea level rise that is mostly due to glacial melts has only been at a rate of 1 foot per century. http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/SeaLevelRi...
A great deal is learned about past climates by studying ice cores from the polar regions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EPICA_...
Most of the recent global warming has happened in the Arctic http://www.ssmi.com/data/msu/graphics/tl...
while the Antarctic seems to have cooled. http://www.ssmi.com/data/msu/graphics/tl...
Most of the warming in the Arctic happened around Western Greenland, and the North Pole. [2] These parts of the Arctic were also warm during the Medieval Warm Period (800 -1200 AD). [3]
Due to there being less sea ice in the Arctic than there was back in the 1970s, ships are starting to sail across the Arctic Ocean. [4]
The Polar Bear is doing quite well.
Wikipedia is your friend.
hi, all comments will be appreciated!!!
