Antarctica is the coldest place on earth, with temperatures at an average of -49°C, and it rarely ever gets above freezing. The reason why the Antarctic is so cold is because sunlight has to go through a thicker atmosphere to hit it as Earth is on an angle which also means the light rays are spread over a larger area than if they were hitting Antarctica directly. This means light is spread over a larger area thus not warming as much as it could.
When sunlight does eventually meet Antarctica, a lot of the rays are bounced off due to the Antarctic being made of very reflective, shiny white ice, and there are no clouds to trap any of the reflected heat. There are no clouds because the environment is so cold, and any water vapour instantly freezes.
…show more content…
For every 1 knot of wind speed, the temperature is reduced by 1°C which makes the makes the already freezing temperatures even lower, and also makes Antarctica the windiest continent on earth.
Since the Earth is spinning tilted on an angle, Antarctica is either in constant sunlight, or constant darkness, making it only have two seasons: summer or winter. It is always dark in winter because Antarctica is on the side of the Earth which is spinning tilted away from the sun but it is the opposite in summer, Antarctica is tilted towards the sun so it is always sunny.
Since winter is in constant darkness, it is a lot colder as no sunlight is present to warm the continent, which means every animal living there has to have an adaption to help them live during the colder winters.
Animals first came to Antarctica for the extensive food supply, which were brought up by upwellings in the ocean which brought nutrients to the surface. This fed the fish there and attracting more due to their food supply, therefore attracted more animals due to the amount of fish. Every animal that lives there now had to adept to these extreme conditions, including the Emperor
The planet we live in, the earth is a tiny composition in this huge universe. It has diversities ranging from highly variant temperature and pressure belts as well as various ecosystem types. One such remarkable feature of the earth is the polar ice caps. There are three major prominent features, the Antarctic ice on the South Pole, the Arctic ice on the North Pole and Greenland on the north between North America and Europe. Antarctica consist about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). It is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). The Arctic ice is not so thick in comparison and it mostly floats in the Arctic Ocean. Greenland, on the other hand would add another 7 meters (20 feet) to the oceans if it melted because Greenland is closer to the equator than Antarctica, the temperatures there are higher, so the ice is more likely to melt. Scientists from the Universities of London and Edinburgh say that ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland together contribute approximately 12 percent of the rise in sea levels. The melting of these enormous ice bodies can significantly impact the global changes in climate and reversely, this climate changes also impact the melting of the ice bodies. It is a two way process and the causes are mostly anthropogenic.
Ocean currents have been known to change direction or slow down. The heat that escapes from the oceans is in the form of water vapor, the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth. Yet, water vapor also contributes to the formation of clouds and has a net cooling effect.
There are even times in the year when the sun doesn’t come up for days. In the tundra we have little snow and even less rainfall. The rainfall is about a quarter inch of yearly rainfall. Even though the tundra’s winters are long and harsh, summers are the shortest season of all. Due to the terrible weather and climate in the tundra, their animal and plant life is very limited.
The ice caps are the most extreme climates on earth. They are located at the north and south poles. These poles are
The winter will last 8 to 10 months followed by the short and much less cold summer. During the summer some lower areas of the Tundra will defrost at which point most of the flora and fauna will start to creep out of hiding. The few summer months are used by many animals such as the polar bear, to mate and to prepare for the once again oncoming winter. During the winter months, most everything remains frozen. Many of the animals migrate south for the winter whereas some stay behind or even group together for ritual group suicide (lemmings).
Winters can get severely into freezing temperatures. During the winter months December, January, and February, snow a...
These penguins lived after the Castastrophic event “Cretaceuous” that demolished the dinosaurs and many other species. Based on the DNA analyses and avaiable evidence of modern birds, we think the modern bird- lineages, including penguins, some how managed to survive through the Cretaceuous. Also it’s not shocking these fossils were found in New Zeland. The South Pacific and Southern oceans were free of predatory mammals, had abundant food, and had space for Penguins to breed. But the Southern Pacific is not the only area where Penguins inhabit. Many of modern penguins “Aptrenodytes” are located in the Antarctic. Recenelty it was discovered that there was a over looked feature on the surface of the fossil penguins flipper bone. These grooves were easily missed because the look was similar to tendons and muscles in the same area. It was discovered that these grooves were blood vessels that make up a counter current heat exchanger called “humeral arterial plexus” which allows penguins to limit the heat loss through the flippers. Also it helped Penguins maintain their core body temperature in cold water allowing them to survive long journeys in the cold waters. Although Penguins have luckily been able develop these traits to survive the dramatic shifts in climate, the world population can not mistake their success as resilience towards global warming.
The word "Eskimo" means "those who eat their meat raw" in the Algonquian language; it also is another name for the Inuit. The word Inuit means "raw meat eaters". Which was actually true since most diet of the Inuit was eaten raw. Ocean and tundra animals were traditionally the target of the Inuit. Since plants did not grow in the Arctic environment, meat and fish was the main diet. The Inuit used kayaks to capture their food that lived in the ocean. Sizes of the animals did not seem to matter considering that whales were one of the animals that subjected in their hunts. Just like most of the native Alaskan groups the Inuit respected the animals. Before or after their usual hunting, they would often perform their traditional rituals in memory of the appreciation of the hunted animals.
The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest ice mass on Earth and is about one-tenth the volume of the Antarctic ice sheet. It is the only significant ice mass in the Arctic today. [ See Antarctica and Climate Change ; and Ice Sheets .] It is an ice-age relict that overlies a bowl-shaped continent almost completely fringed by coastal mountains.
Isolation, loneliness, desertion-these synonymous attributes describe the scene of Antarctica. White blankets of ice and snow laid as far as the eye can see, with nothing else in sight. “Antarctica was a desert...Much of it was was still unexplored. There were no cities.” (pg 301). Although the term desert completely contradicts Antarctica, Laura Van Den
Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first report in 1990, the international community has known “emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide.” (IPCC, 1990). The emissions put into the atmosphere by human actions will further the greenhouse effect that results in a warmer planet. This paper will examine how global warming may impact the Polar Jet Stream seen in fig.1, while exploring feedback loops that may or not be further destabilizing the band of high winds in the upper atmosphere that drives weather systems.
One huge impact of global warming is the change in animals’ habitats. When the earth’s temperature is increasing, it creates the change of weather conditions in a certain area, which causes some kinds of animals in this area to live with many difficulties, or sometimes those kinds of animals are forced to move to new region when they cannot handle the difficulties. The arctic fox is an example for this situation. According to the article “How Does Global Warming Affect Wildlife,” arctic foxes prefer to live in the cooler environment while their habitat is getting warmer and warmer due to global warming, so arctic foxes have to leave their own home to seek a more suitable area (National W...
... happened these caused hominids to get smarter and then evolve to use tools, start fires, hunt, and trap, grow crops, and build houses. This goes back to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. If they did not evolve to survive the cold then the may have died before being able to pass of there geans and then the species would die out.
...an others, and many species may become extinct. Pests, diseases and invasive species may also increase due to the climate change that occurs. Climate change may bring population growth to the area due to the warmer climate and more livable conditions, which may become problematic to maintain and these growing outside influences will also effect the culture of the people currently living in the area.
earth. Many species live in cold areas, but with the climate rising those areas are becoming