POLAR CONTRASTS

Hokitika Guardian, 2 January 1929, Page 7

POLAR CONTRASTS

ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC

DI ST) NCTIV E Cl LA RACT ICRS.

PLANT AND ANIAIAL LIFE

According to popular belief, there is a great similarity between the Arctie anid Antarctic regions, both being intensely cold, covered with ice am. 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 (bail their similarities says the .Aidbourne Age. The Arctic is an ocean, with numerous islands and is surrounded l.y 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 ‘l,ol>D,OfK) square miles in extent, and therefore is not only larger than Australia, but bug or than Europe. “Antarctica possesses a distinctive character which in many particulars is distinctively unique,” states Mr J. Gordon Hayes in bis admirable book, “Antarctica,” which was published some months ago. “Its most prominent feature is its dissimilarity from other continents. It has no water apart from the sea which encircles it, and this neltr the coasts is almost invariably frozen. It Ims 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 hind animals, no inhabitants, and lias never seen a woman. It is positively unique as a continent __in its isolation and height above sea level, in the heaviness of its glacicrisation with its harrier of shell ice, the magnitude of its glaciers and continental ice, and in the velocity—we might say ferocity—of its winds.” The Arctic explorer. Air A’ilhjalmer Steliinsson, writing in the American monthly, the Living Age. on the two expeditions which have set forth for the Antarctic, draws attention to the dissimilarity of Arctic and Antarctic conditions. He states that most of the old-fashioned ideas about the polar regions appiy to the Antarctic, hut 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 ice 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 rocks near the coasts. In many places the iee cap projects for miles 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 bo found at the South Pole shortly after midwinter. The minimum temperature, states Mr Stelansson, is probably 120 decrees below zero. J',ut. the minimum temperature at the North Pole in midwinter is probably not more than GO degrees below zero, which is 10 to 110 degrees warmer than some places where Europeans live, such as Verkhoyansk, in file Yakutsk province of Siberia. The three main factors which determine extreme minimum tempera Lure in winter are distance from the equator, distance from the ocean, and height above sea level. The South Pole is at the extreme distance Irom the equator, some hundreds of miles from the 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 lias 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 Stelansson considers that even lower temperatures may be registered in midwinter somewhere near the centre of Greenland. But in any case the cold pole of the Northern Hemisphere is between 9(H) und 121)9 miles from the North Pole, whereas the cold pole oi 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 hn« been earned 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 wellconducted Arctic expedition should commence sledge operations in .January or February, and finish by April. Hut 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 Ocean and in the ocean surrounding the Antarctic continent. But the. contrast lad ween the two polar regions is striking when animal life on shore is compared. In the Arctic there are great land animals such as caribou (rcindc-r). ovidos (musk ox), polar

bears and wolves, also white foxes, several varieties of rodents, and 15) 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-looted 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 oi the ice. There are seals in the Antarctic which clamber ashore but the seal is not a land 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 lloweririg plants, 380 variates of lichens, '250 varieties of mosses, and 30 varieties of fern have been found in the Arctic. “One of the most surprising features of Arctic scenery is the variety and relative wealth of plant life, 1 ' states Mr It. N. Rudinosc Brown, in his book, “The Polar .Regions,” published in 1927. “To say 'bat several hundred species of (lowering plants and terns and a great many mosses and lichens have been recorded from Arctic regions give but a poor idea of the vegetation. Certainly it is localised, There arc bare Ureas devoid of any close covering oi vegetation, but seldom devoid of a few scattered plants. Except on glaciers moving moraines, and ice caps, there is no complete desert; evert exposed mountain crags support some plant life. On the other hand, there are luxuriant cases quite inconsistent with the prevalent conception of Arctic barrenness. Every Arctic traveller remembers his surprise ami delight when lor the first time in high latitude he came on meadows of rich grasses, bright tall yellow buttercups, luxuriant saxifrages, violet cuckoo flowers, blue polomeniums or many other flowers, moorlands purple with saxifrage as a Scottish hillside is with heather; peat bogs white with myriad tufts of waving cotton grass; dry banks with their hundreds of sturdy white and yellow saxifrage, dryas campions and other bloom or some wind-swept summit on which the Arctic poppy triumphantly flowered.

•‘The contrast between Arctic and Antartic is strikingly shown in the almost total absence of land vegetation in south polar regions. Only two rareflowering plants have been recorded (Dcscapsia antarctica and Colobanthus crassifolius,) and these only from the northern and more open parts of Graham Land and the South Shotlands. Jlotli species are poor, dwafted, and vegetative in reproduction in their Antarcio liabiat. There are no ferns but mosses are 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 late 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 ifaces, exposed to sunlight. The 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-cold water, '(here is practically no possibiliy of higher plants completing their life cycles in these conditions.”

It lias been estimated that the tonnage of vegetation in 100 square miles of the Areie is great than the tonnage of vegetation in the whole of the Antarctic continent, which as previously stated, is larger than Europe. Finally, there are no human inhabitants of the Anaretic such ns the 'Eskimos in the Arctic .regions. It is improbable that any race of mankind ever existed in Antarctica hut only scientific study of the continent can permanently settle this point..