Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A polar climate consists of cool summers and very cold winters (or, in the case of ice cap climates, no real summer at all), which results in treeless tundras, glaciers, or a permanent or semi-permanent layer of ice. It is identified with the letter E in the Köppen climate classification.
Visualization of the ice and snow covering Earth's northern and southern polar regions Northern Hemisphere permafrost (permanently frozen ground) in purple. The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles.
These climates are in the polar front region in winter, and thus have moderate temperatures and changeable, rainy weather. Summers are hot and dry, due to the domination of the subtropical high-pressure systems, except in the immediate coastal areas, where summers are milder due to the nearby presence of cold ocean currents that may bring fog ...
The cold temperatures in the polar regions cause air to descend, creating the high pressure (a process called subsidence), just as the warm temperatures around the equator cause air to rise instead and create the low pressure Intertropical Convergence Zone.
By acting as a heat sink, the polar cell moves the abundant heat from the equator toward the polar regions. The polar cell, terrain, and katabatic winds in Antarctica can create very cold conditions at the surface, for instance the lowest temperature recorded on Earth: −89.2 °C at Vostok Station in Antarctica, measured in 1983. [6] [7] [8]
The process can be seen on the figure on the far right, where the sea surface temperature change in the past 50 years is shown, which is up to 5 degrees in some places. This change in the Arctic climate is most prominent in the Barents Sea , a shallow shelf sea north of Scandinavia , where sea-ice is disappearing faster than in any other Arctic ...
The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
Climate of the Tibetan Plateau; Climates of low annual temperature range ... Cold surface currents from polar regions, ... A process called frost heaving is ...