North and South Poles. By: Hannah and Abigail.

Arctic Environment  The Arctic Circle is at a imaginary line at 66 degrees North latitude. Up above the Arctic Circle, there are 24 hours of daylight in summer and 24 hours of darkness during the winter.  Some Arctic land can be lived on.  The average temperature in the Arctic is negative 70 degrees in the winter and can get up to 60 degrees in the summer.  The Arctic region is frozen throughout the year.  For a little while, scientists thought most of the Arctic was frozen land. Now they know that most of the Arctic is actually frozen ocean.

The Antarctic Land  Antarctica is surrounded by water.  Antarctica is the fifth largest continent.  Temperatures range from -40F degrees to -85F degrees in the winter. It never reaches above freezing.  The South Pole is in the center of Antarctica.  One glacier-covered mountain is over 16,000 feet high.  In the Antarctic, it is too cold for trees, animals, and even disease germs.

Arctic Animals  The Arctic and the Antarctic are unfriendly to most animals. Warm blooded animals can live there easily. That’s because their body temperature is around 100F degrees.  Most Arctic animals live in the tundra.  The land is mostly frozen during the spring and summer, plants with little roots grow close to the ground. Those plants are food for the animals that live there. Some animals are wolverines, gray wolves, and the grizzly bear.

Antarctic Animals  Antarctica is very cold. There is no land life, so no land animals exists.  But, penguins, seals, whales, and seabirds live there. Unlike the land the animals take in their food from the Southern Ocean.  Fun Fact: There is about 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 of Crab-Eating Seals.

Arctic Explorers  European and American explorers had a hard time reaching the North Pole. Some made it, others died trying to reach their goal.  The water and ice that surrounded the pole covers an area more than 5 million square feet.  They battled strong wind, sub-zero cold, and glare from the snow and ice in the winter.  These two people are Admiral Richard E. Byrd. (top right) and Robert E. Peary. (bottom left). These two men explored the Arctic.

Antarctic Explorers  Antarctica is truly the last frontier. Of the seven continents, it is the coldest and the most out-of-the-way.  Its weather is the most severe because it is surrounded by some of the world’s roughest seas. Floating ice makes the continent unbearable in winter. No wonder it took to long to set foot on it.  These two explorers are Shirley Metz (top right) and Ronald Amundsen.

Eskimos  Eskimos live farther north than any other people in the world.  An igloo is built out of nothing but ice and snow. Igloos made it possible for some Canadian and Greenland Eskimos to live year round in some of the coldest temperatures on Earth.  Other Eskimos live in the treeless regions of the frozen land called tundra. Also on the icy coasts of the Labrador, Hudson Bay, the Beaufort, Bering Seas, the Pacific Ocean, Baffin Bay, and the Greenland sea.

Eskimos Continued…  The Eskimos learned to live under some of the harshest conditions on earth. They have lived under those conditions for about 3,000 years.  The Eskimos designed special loose-fitting, fur-lined hooded coats called parkas. Parkas were made to be worn with waterproof wind-breakers, warm fur trousers, and seal skin boots.  Eskimos lived in peace with their land. They only killed animals for their food and resources they needed. They killed caribou, for example, for its skins, or to make clothing, or for its meat for food.

Arctic Today  Today, air bases and radar stations dot the shores of the tundra. Usually, many ships and planes bring in equipment and food.  Oil companies which came in the 1960’s and 1970’s, helped set up construction of the Alaska pipeline.  The Snowmobile has replaced the dogsled as their main transportation for Eskimos today.  Something to think about: if you were to visit the Arctic, what would you like to see, what would you like to do?  Answer for Abby and Hannah: we would like to see real live Eskimos and we would like to go visit the grizzly bears.

Antarctic Today  Antarctica has no permanent human residents because it is too cold for people to live there.  But, the region does have a growing population of scientists. Scientists swim in the icy waters of Antarctica.  Marine biologists observe the wealth of sea life.  Tourists come to Antarctica and take pictures of the formally dressed penguins.

Fun Facts  Killer whales hunt in packs of 5 to 20. They are not the largest whales in the sea but they are the most deadly. For example they eat seals, penguins, and even baleen whales which are larger than them.  Some Eskimos still hunt for whales. Today, as in the past, many people work together to pull a whale out of the water once it is killed. They cut up the whale for it’s blubber and meat.  It can so cold in Antarctica that metals break like glass. (shatter). A person without proper clothes, freeze to a solid in about a few minutes.  Only about one-eighth of an iceberg shows above water. The rest, seven-eighth’s, is hidden underwater. Therefore, it is hard for a ship’s captain to know where the iceberg begins and ends.

Resource: KIDS DISCOVER North & South Poles August/September 1991

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