POLAR CONTRASTS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 January 1929, Page 9

POLAR CONTRASTS

A GCORiDINiG to popular belief, there is a great similarity between the Arctic and Antarctic regions, both being intensely cold, covered with ice and snow, and having months of continual daylight in summer and months of continual darkness in winter. But to the scientist the contrasts between the two polar regions are more striking than their similarities, says the “Melbourne Age.” The Arctic is an ocean, with numerous islands, and is surrounded by the north coasts of the three continents of Europe, Asia, and America; but the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean. This continent of Antarctica is about 4,000,000. square miles in extent, and therefore is not only larger than Australia, but larger than Europe. “Antarctica possesses a distinctive character which in many particulars is. distinctively unique,” states Mr J. Gordon Haves in his admirable book, “‘Antarctica,” which was published some months ago. “Its most prominent feature is its dissimilarity from other continents. It has m water apart from the sea which encircles it, and this near the coasts is almost invariably frozen. It has no rivers except a few small glacial streams, whose bonds are unsealed occasionally in summer. Glaciers are the rivers of Antarctica. It has no lakes, and few frozen pools. It has no trees or flowers, no soil worth cultivating, no land animals, no inhabitants, and has never seen a woman. It is positively unique as a continent —in its isolation and height above sea level, in the heaviness of its glaeierisation with its barrier of shelf ice, the magnitude of its glaciers and continental ice, and in the velocity—wc might s.av ferocity—of its winds.” The Arctic explorer, Mr Vilhjalmer Stefansson, writing in the American monthly, “The Living Age,” on the expeditions which have sot forth for tlic Antarctic, draws attention- to the dissimilarity of Arctic and Antarctic conditions. “He states that most of the oldfashioned ideas about the polar regions apply to the Antarctic, but not to the Arctic. There is a real cap of ice round the South Pole, but not round the North Pole. Almost the whole of the Antarctic continent is -covered by a great dome of iee, rising from the coasts to interior elevations of some 10,. 000 feet. This iee -cap completely hides the underlying surface features of the ground, except for certain mountain ranges which tower above the ice, a few isolated peaks near the edge, and in places bare racks near the coasts. In many places the ice cap projects for mile's into the sea, ending in lofty ice fields, from which great masses of ice fall off and float away as icebergs. The ice cap renders it difficult to say where land and water meet to form the coast of the continent. COLDEST PLACE ON EARTH. The temperature at the South Pole is much colder than at the North Pole. Probably the most intense cold on earth is to be found at the. South Pole shortly after midwinter. The minimuin temperature. states Mr Stefansson, is probably 120 degrees below zero. But the minimum temperature at the North Pole in midwinter is probably not more than 60 degrees below zero, which is 10 to 30 degrees warmer than some places

ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS

where Europeans live, such as Verkhoyansk, in the Yakutsk province of -Siberia. The three main factors which

determine extreme minimmn temperature in winter are distance from the equator, distance from the ocean, and height above sea level. The South Pole is at th e extreme distance from the equator, some hundreds of miles from tlie nearest ocean, and about. 10,000 feet above sea level. But the North Pole being at a spot in the Arctic Ocean is at sea level, and therefore has only one of the three main factors of intense cold, i.e., extreme distance from the equator. In the Northern Hemisphere the three factors that' produce low temperature are most effectively combined at Verkhoyansk, which is known -to scientists as. the cold pole of the Northern Hemisphere. But Mr Stefansson considers that even lower temperatures may be registered in midwinter somewhere near the centre cf Greenland. But in any ease the cold pole of the Northern Hemisphere is between 900 and 1200 miles from the North Pole, whereas the cold pole of the Southern Hemisphere is at or near the South Pole. ANIMAL LIFE. ■Contrary to general belief, the most favourable season for exploration in the Arctic is in winter. All exploration in the Arctic for the past 70 years has been carried out * during the winter months. Commander Peary, who made several expeditions -to the Arctic, and was the first man to reach the North Pole, laid down that a well-conducted Arctic expedition, should commence slcdgo •operations in January or February, and finish by April. But the favourable season for exploration in the Antarctic is the summer. All the expeditions to the Antarctic have -begun their work in spring and finished by the autumn. As regards 'ocean life, conditions are similar both in the Arctic and Antarctic. There are enormous quantities of animal life in the Arctic £>cean and in the ocean surrounding tne Antarctic continent. But th'e contrast between the two polar regions is striking when animal life on shore is compared. In the Arctic there are great iand animals such as caribou (reindeer), ovidos (musk ox), polar bears and wolves, also white foxes, several varieties of rodents, and 150 species of birds that go north in the spring in the nesting season, and return south with their young in the winter. But in the Antarctic continent there is not a four-footed land animal of any kind—no bears, wolves, foxes, reindeer, or musk ox, no rodents and no birds, except penguins, which are not land birds, though they clamber on the rocks at the edge of the eie. There are seals in the Antarctic which clamber ashore but the seal is not a iand animal. PLANT LIFE.

The reason why the Arctic is rich in animal and bird life is because (contrary to the general impression) there is abundance of vegetation in the Arctic regions. More than 800 varieties of flowering, plants 300 varieties of lichens 250 varieties of mosses, and 30 varieties of fern have been found in the Arctic. “One of the most surprising feat-

ures of Arctic scenery is the variety of relative wealth of plant life” states Mr It. N. JlncLmosc Brown, in his book, “The Polar Regions,” ,published in 1.027. “To say that several hundred species of flowering plants and ferns and a great many mosses and lichens have been recorded from Arctic regions gives but a poor idea of the vegetation. Certainly it is localised. There arc bare areas devoid of any close covering of vegetation, but seldom devoid of a few scattered plants. Except on glaciers, moving moraines, and ice caps, there is no complete desert; even exposed mountain crags support some plant life. On the other hand, there are luxuriant oases, quite inconsistent with the prevalent conception of Arctic barrenness. Every Arctic traveller remembers his surprise and delight when for the first time in high latitudes he came on meadows of rich grasses, bright with tall yellow buttercups, luxuriant saxifrages, violet cuckoo flowers, blue polemeniuins or many other flowers; moorlands purple with saxifrage as a Scottish hillside is with heather; j>cn.t bogs white with myriad tufts of waving cotton grass; dry banks with their hundreds of sturdy- white and other blooms; or some wind-swept summit on which the Arctic poppy I triumphantly flowered. |

“The contrast between Arctic and Antarctic is strikingly shown in the almost total absence of land vegetation in south polar regions. Only two rareflowering plants have been recorded (Deseapsia antarctica and Colobanthus crassifolius), and these only from the northern and more open parts of Graham Land and the South She.tlands. Both species arc poor, dwarfed, and vegetative in reproduction in their Antarctic habitat. There are no ferns, but mosses arc numerous in individuals, if not in species, which amount to about 50 up to the present. Lichens are numerous both in species and individuals, and form the chief aspect of Antarctic vegetation . . . The poverty of Antarctic plant life is easy to understand, for the fundamental reason lies in the lack of any real summer as far as temperature is concerned. There is no month with a mean above freezing point. As a result snow lies on the ground, and December is well advanced before the sun’s rays lay bare what little soil occurs in a few places. By early February the snow again begins to accumulate. Only for four to six weeks is the vegetation, excepting lichen on cliff faces, exposed to sunlight. Tire ground thaws to a depth of a few inches only on a. few cloudless days about midsummer, and even then is probably saturated with ice-eold water. There is practically no possibility of higher plants completing their life cycles in these conditions.”

It has been estimated that the tonnage of vegetation in 100 square miles of the Arctic is greater than the tonnage of vegetation in the whole of the Antarctic continent.,'which, as previously stated, is larger than Europe. Finally, there arc no human inhabitants of the Antarctic such as the Eskimos in the Arctic regions. It is improbable that- any race of mankind ever exised in Antarctica, but only scientific study of the continent can permanently settle this point.