Project - Team - Media - News/Blog - Sponsors - Contacts


What is the Arctic ?

It seems quite clear what the Arctic is – many people propably would answer to this question :
That’s where it is cold and dark and snowy!

But how can one define this “cold and dark” region and where excactly does the Arctic start?

Actually, there are much more then one definition for “the Arctic”. One is just to define it as the region north of the polar cycle, which lies at around 66° and simply is the latitude where the sun is above the horizon for one full night in the year (here the midnightsun “starts”). But this definition includes relatively warm places in northern Norway but not cold and harsh places in Greenland or Canada – this is due to the different climate conditions in the different parts of the world, depending on Ocean-Land distribution and warm or cold ocean currents. For example northern Norway is influenced by the warm North Atlantic Current, an branch of the better known “Gulf stream” flowing along the norwegian Coast. So other Definitions were made, taking the climate in account: The Region of July mean Temperatures of less then 10°C or, a more biological approach, the region where no trees will grow anymore – at least no proper trees, actually there are even so called “trees” in Svalbard, but they don’t get higher then 2cm!






Project - Team - Media - News/Blog - Sponsors - Contacts
Contact us: frozenfive@gmail.com