Polar regions: Arctic and Antarctic

In short: The Arctic is an ice-covered sea around the North Pole surrounded by land. The Antarctic is an ice-covered continent around the South Pole. Both are cold but very different.

In more detail: Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest continent. The 1959 treaty dedicates it to peace and research.

In detail

• Antarctica: An ice sheet up to 4 km thick, holding about 70 percent of the world’s fresh water. No country owns it.
• Arctic: Sea ice that melts in summer; polar bears, seals, indigenous peoples (Inuit, Sámi).
• Polar day and night: Around the poles the Sun stays up for weeks in summer and down in winter (jahreszeiten-entstehung).
• Climate change: The Arctic warms especially fast, sea ice shrinks (klimawandel-grundlagen).
• Sea level: Melting land ice raises sea level.
• Research: Ice cores reveal the climate of the last hundreds of thousands of years (polarlichter).