Chuyện lạ

North Pole or Antarctica, which is colder?

06/06/2022 10:09 GMT+7

Both poles of the Earth are cold, but where is the temperature lower?

The reason why both the North Pole and the South Pole are cold is because of their geographical position at the top and bottom of the Earth. This means that there is almost no direct sunlight at the poles.

North Pole or Antarctica, which is colder?
North Pole or Antarctica, which is colder?

At both poles, the sun lies very low below the horizon, even in the middle of summer or winter. Meanwhile, the white surfaces of ice and snow at the poles are highly reflective, if incident light is reflected back into space.

Is the North Pole or the South Pole colder?

According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, despite the same factors that make the two poles cold, Antarctica is still cold at the North Pole.

The average annual temperature in the Arctic is minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter and 0 degrees Celsius in summer. Meanwhile, the average temperature of Antarctica is much lower, the average annual temperature is minus 60 degrees Celsius in winter and minus 28 degrees Celsius in summer.

The main reason why Antarctica is colder than the North Pole lies in the difference between the two Earth poles. Robin Bell, a polar scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University in New York, USA, said that the Arctic is essentially an ocean surrounded by land, while Antarctica is a continent. land, a land surrounded by ocean.

Besides, the North Pole is located at sea level, Antarctica is the highest continent, with an average altitude of about 2,300 meters. The higher you go, the colder it gets.

North Pole or Antarctica, which is colder?
The North Pole is an ocean, surrounded by land. Antarctica is land, surrounded by ocean

Which pole has more ice?

At both poles, the ice cover varies throughout the year, developing during the long, dark winters, melting slowly in the summer.

Since the Arctic is almost entirely surrounded by land, sea ice is not as mobile as Antarctic sea ice. As a result, the Arctic ice sheets are usually about 1 meter thicker than the Antarctic ice.

On average, the Arctic ice area reaches a minimum of about 6.5 million square kilometers, a maximum of about 15.6 million square kilometers. On average, Antarctic ice covers a smaller area with a minimum of about 3.1 million square kilometers and a maximum of 18.8 million square kilometers.

However, Antarctica possesses more total ice than the North Pole, Antarctica contains about 90% of the world’s ice.

Numerous investigations into the amount of ice at the poles show that both the thickness and extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic have decreased significantly over the past 30 years, mainly due to global warming. Other observations suggest that the Arctic is warming. In Antarctica, the loss of surrounding sea ice and loss of land ice has had its ups and downs over the past 40 years or so.

Hoang Dung (synopsis)

You are reading the article North Pole or Antarctica, which is colder?
at Blogtuan.info – Source: infonet.vietnamnet.vn – Read the original article here

Back to top button