All about the Poles

1.    Which of the Polar regions — North Pole (Arctic) or South Pole (Antarctic) — is colder and so the coldest place on Earth? 2.    Which among the North and South Pole is on water? 3.    What time zone is the South Pole in? 4.    As cold and dry as Antarctica is, one would not expect a river to run on this isolated continent, but it does. Can you name it? 5.    Now that you know that North Pole is in Arctic Ocean, the smallest of the five oceans of the world, but do you know how many continents the ocean touches? 6.    On which of the two Poles, does it rain more? 7.    What is the average length of time between sunrise to sunset on the Poles? 8.    In terms of height, which Pole, the North or the South is higher? 9.    Why are there more research stations on and around the South Pole and but not on the North Pole?

Answers:

1. The South Pole or Antarctica, that holds the record of lowest temperature ever -90C (-130F).

2. The North Pole is on water, the Arctic Ocean, while the South Pole is on the continent called Antarctic.

3. Amazingly, the South Pole is in all the time zones! All the time zones (the imaginary line by which we have divided the world into time zones) come together at the South Pole, so you will be technically crossing a time zone with each step that you take. But for all practical purposes, people at the research stations there use the New Zealand time, the nearest country to it.

4. The Onyx River, that flows for about 20 miles during the short Antarctic summer.

5. Three — North America, Europe and Asia.

6. It doesn’t rain much on either the North or South pole because they are both very cold and dry places. In other words they are cold deserts, where the air is too cold to hold any moisture.

7. Six months! On the North Pole, the sun rises on March 21, steadily climbing until it reaches its highest point on June 21, then slowly descending until September 23, after which it remains night for half a year. During the long polar day, the sun makes about 182 circles around your head.

8. The South Pole is higher, the Amundsen-Scott Base there is at a height of 2,835 metres (9,300ft), while the North Pole is on the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean, so it’s only around sea level.

9. Simple — the South Pole is on land while the North Pole is just a huge sheet of ice that moves very slowly. So a research station at the North Pole would wanders off to lower latitudes until it reaches the end of the ice and drops into the sea.

— Rehan Jalal