Though the Vikings explored parts of the Arctic over a millennium ago, and small numbers of people have been living along the Arctic coast for much longer, scientific knowledge about the region was slow to develop the large islands of Severnaya Zemlya, just north of the Taymyr Peninsula on the Russian mainland, were not discovered until 1913, and not mapped until the early 1930s History of Arctic climate observation ĭue to the lack of major population centres in the Arctic, weather and climate observations from the region tend to be widely spaced and of short duration compared to the midlatitudes and tropics. Moving inland from the coast over mainland North America and Eurasia, the moderating influence of the Arctic Ocean quickly diminishes, and the climate transitions from the Arctic to subarctic, generally, in less than 500 kilometres (310 miles), and often over a much shorter distance. The Arctic waters that are not sea ice in late summer, including Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay, Ungava Bay, the Davis, Denmark, Hudson and Bering Straits, and the Labrador, Norwegian, (ice-free all year), Greenland, Baltic, Barents (southern part ice-free all year), Kara, Laptev, Chukchi, Okhotsk, sometimes Beaufort and Bering Seas.The entire island of Greenland, although its ice sheet and ice-free coastal regions have different climatic conditions.The Canadian Arctic Archipelago includes the large and small islands, except Greenland, on the Canadian side of the Arctic, and the waters between them.The Arctic Basin includes the Arctic Ocean within the average minimum extent of sea ice.This definition of the Arctic can be further divided into four different regions: The nations which comprise the Arctic region. In summer, the presence of the nearby water keeps coastal areas from warming as much as they might otherwise. In winter, this relatively warm water, even though covered by the polar ice pack, keeps the North Pole from being the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere, and it is also part of the reason that Antarctica is so much colder than the Arctic. As such, the climate of much of the Arctic is moderated by the ocean water, which can never have a temperature below −2 ☌ (28 ☏). The Arctic consists of ocean that is largely surrounded by land. Some parts of the Arctic are covered by ice ( sea ice, glacial ice, or snow) year-round, and nearly all parts of the Arctic experience long periods with some form of ice on the surface. There is a large amount of variability in climate across the Arctic, but all regions experience extremes of solar radiation in both summer and winter. The climate of the Arctic is characterized by long, cold winters and short, cool summers. The white area shows the average minimum extent of sea ice in summer as of 1975. The red line is the 10☌ isotherm in July, commonly used to define the Arctic region also shown is the Arctic Circle.
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