Climate characteristics of the Arctic region

The Arctic has a polar ice sheet climate.

Polar ice sheets are distributed in the polar regions and nearby areas, including Greenland, several islands in the Arctic Ocean and the ice sheet plateaus of the Antarctic continent. This is the birthplace of the icy ocean air mass and the Antarctic air mass. It is in a state of perpetual night throughout the winter. Although there is perpetual daylight in the summer half of the year, the sunlight is oblique and the heat generated is weak. Therefore, the climate is severely cold all year round, with the temperature in every month being below 0℃.

The winter in the Arctic Ocean lasts for 6 months from November to April of the following year. May-June and September-October belong to spring and autumn respectively. Summer only lasts for two months, July and August. The average temperature in January ranges from -20 to -40°C. The average temperature in August, the warmest month, only reaches about -3℃. The lowest temperature measured on a drifting station near the pole of the Arctic Ocean was -59°C.

Due to the influence of ocean currents, Arctic anticyclones, and the distribution of land and sea, the coldest place in the Arctic is not in the central Arctic Ocean. Minimum temperatures of -70°C were recorded in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon, Siberia, and temperatures of -63°C were recorded in the Yukon River region of Alaska.

Extended information:

1. Arctic Ocean Currents

The Arctic region is an out-and-out world of ice and snow, but due to the movement of ocean currents, the sea on the surface of the Arctic Ocean Ice is always drifting, cracking and melting, so it is impossible to accumulate thousands of meters of ice and snow like the Antarctic continent over millions of years.

Most of the surface of the Arctic Ocean is covered by sea ice all year round, making it the only white ocean on earth. The average thickness of Arctic sea ice is 3 meters, covering 73% of the total ocean area in winter, about 10-11 million square kilometers, and 53% in summer, about 7.49-8 million square kilometers. The sea ice in the Central Arctic Ocean has persisted for 3 million years and is permanent sea ice.

2. Arctic Hydrology

The southern boundary of sea ice is not fixed and can often vary by hundreds of kilometers as hydrological and meteorological conditions change. Under the influence of wind and ocean currents, ice floes can accumulate and form huge iceberg mountains. The vast majority of icebergs commonly seen refer to huge ice bodies larger than 5 meters in diameter that have broken off from continental ice shelves or continental ice sheets. The thickness of large table-shaped icebergs generally reaches 200-300 meters, and their average life span is up to 4 years.

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