Ellesmere Island is Canada's northernmost and third largest island, and the tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of 196,236 km2 (75,767 sq mi), slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total length of the island is 830 km (520 mi).
Grise Fiord is an Inuit hamlet on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is one of three populated places on the island; despite its low population, it is the largest community on Ellesmere Island. Created by the Canadian Government in 1953 through a relocation of Inuit families from Inukjuak, Quebec, it is Canada's northernmost public community. It is also one of the coldest inhabited places in the world, with an average yearly temperature of −16.5 °C (2.3 °F).
Alert, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada, is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world. The location is on Ellesmere Island at latitude 82°30'05" north, 817 km (508 mi) from the North Pole. It takes its name from the Royal Navy vessel HMS Alert, which wintered 10 km (6.2 mi) east of the present station off what is now Cape Sheridan in 1875–1876.
Eureka is a small research base on Fosheim Peninsula, Ellesmere Island, Qikiqtaaluk Region, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. It is located on the north side of Slidre Fiord, which enters Eureka Sound farther west. It is the third-northernmost permanent research community in the world. The only two farther north are Alert, which is also on Ellesmere Island, and Nord, in Greenland. Eureka has the lowest average annual temperature and the lowest amount of precipitation of any weather station in Canada.
Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, is the United States Space Force's northernmost base, and the northernmost installation of the U.S. Armed Forces, located 1,210 km (750 mi) north of the Arctic Circle and 1,524 km (947 mi) from the North Pole on the northwest coast of Greenland. Pituffik's Arctic environment includes icebergs in North Star Bay, two islands, a polar ice sheet, and Wolstenholme Fjord – the only place on Earth where four active glaciers join. The base is home to a substantial portion of the global network of missile warning sensors of Space Delta 4, and space surveillance and space control sensors of Space Delta 2, providing space awareness and advanced missile detection capabilities to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the United States Space Force, and joint partners.
Cornwallis Island is one of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, part of the Arctic Archipelago, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. It lies to the west of Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island in the world, and at its greatest length is about 113 km (70 mi). At 6,995 km2 (2,701 sq mi) in size, it is the 96th largest island in the world, and Canada's 21st largest island. Cornwallis Island is separated by the Wellington Channel from Devon Island, and by the Parry Channel from Somerset Island to the south. Northwest of Cornwallis Island lies Little Cornwallis Island, the biggest of a group of small islands at the north end of McDougall Sound, which separates Cornwallis Island from nearby Bathurst Island.
A member of the Arctic Archipelago, Prince Patrick Island is the westernmost of the Queen Elizabeth Islands in the Northwest Territories of Canada, lying northwest of Melville Island. The area of Prince Patrick Island is 15,848 km2 (6,119 sq mi), making it the 55th largest island in the world and Canada's 14th largest island. It has historically been icebound all year, making it one of the least accessible parts of Canada. Located at the entrance of the M'Clure Strait, Prince Patrick Island is uninhabited.
Ellef Ringnes Island is an uninhabited island and one of the Sverdrup Islands in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. A member of the Queen Elizabeth Islands and Arctic Archipelago, it is located in the Arctic Ocean, east of Borden Island, and west of Amund Ringnes Island. It has an area of 11,295 km2 (4,361 sq mi), making it the 69th largest island in the world and Canada's 16th largest island. Its highest mount is 260 m (850 ft).
Old Crow is a community in the Canadian territory of Yukon.
Resolute or Resolute Bay is an Inuit hamlet on Cornwallis Island in Nunavut, Canada. It is at the northern end of Resolute Bay and the Northwest Passage and is part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region.
Station Nord is a military and scientific station in northeastern Greenland 1700 km north of the Arctic Circle.
The Kee Bird was a United States Army Air Forces Boeing B-29 Superfortress, serial 45-21768, of the 46th Reconnaissance Squadron, that became marooned after making an emergency landing in northwest Greenland during a secret Cold War spying mission on 21 February 1947. While the entire crew was safely evacuated after spending three days in the isolated Arctic tundra, the aircraft itself was left at the landing site. It lay there undisturbed until 1994, when a privately funded mission was launched to repair and return it. During the attempted recovery, a fire broke out, resulting in the destruction and loss of the airframe on the ground.
The Polar Challenge was a competitive, 350 nautical mile team race taking place in the Arctic, to the 1996 location of the Magnetic North Pole. The race ran between mid-April and mid-May each year, taking teams approximately 4 weeks to complete, including the training time. This event should not be confused with the Polar Race, which was a different event taking a different route, and run by a different organisation.
Top Gear: Polar Special, also known as the Polar Challenge, is a special edition episode of BBC motoring programme Top Gear that was first broadcast on 25 July 2007 on BBC Two. The episode follows presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May in their successful attempt to be the first people to reach the 1996 position of the North Magnetic Pole in a motor vehicle. They did not, however, reach the actual position of the North Magnetic Pole at the time which in 2007 was 150 miles away. They were also 1200 miles away from the geographical North Pole. For added drama and competition, they raced against presenter Richard Hammond who travelled by dog sled, the traditional means of transport around the Arctic. This was the first episode ever aired in HDTV.
Polar amplification is the phenomenon that any change in the net radiation balance tends to produce a larger change in temperature near the poles than in the planetary average. This is commonly referred to as the ratio of polar warming to tropical warming. On a planet with an atmosphere that can restrict emission of longwave radiation to space, surface temperatures will be warmer than a simple planetary equilibrium temperature calculation would predict. Where the atmosphere or an extensive ocean is able to transport heat polewards, the poles will be warmer and equatorial regions cooler than their local net radiation balances would predict. The poles will experience the most cooling when the global-mean temperature is lower relative to a reference climate; alternatively, the poles will experience the greatest warming when the global-mean temperature is higher.
The climate of the Arctic is characterized by long, cold winters and short, cool summers. There is a large amount of variability in climate across the Arctic, but all regions experience extremes of solar radiation in both summer and winter. Some parts of the Arctic are covered by ice year-round, and nearly all parts of the Arctic experience long periods with some form of ice on the surface.
Fletcher's Ice Island or T-3 was an iceberg discovered by U.S. Air Force Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher. Between 1952 and 1978 it was used as a staffed scientific drift station that included huts, a power plant, and a runway for wheeled aircraft. The iceberg was a thick tabular sheet of glacial ice that drifted throughout the central Arctic Ocean in a clockwise direction. First inhabited in 1952 as an arctic weather report station, it was abandoned in 1954 but reinhabited on two subsequent occasions. The station was inhabited mainly by scientists along with a few military crewmen and was resupplied during its existence primarily by military planes operating from Utqiagvik, Alaska. The iceberg was later occupied by the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, and served as a base of operations for the Navy's arctic research projects such as sea bottom and ocean swell studies, seismographic activities, meteorological studies and other classified projects under the direction of the Department of Defense. Before the era of satellites, the research station on T-3 had been a valuable site for measurements of the atmosphere in the Arctic.
Cape Parry is a headland in Canada's Northwest Territories. Located at the northern tip of the Parry Peninsula, it projects into Amundsen Gulf. The nearest settlement is Paulatuk, 100 km (62 mi) to the south, and Fiji Island is located 9 km (5.6 mi) to the west. Cape Parry was formerly accessible through Cape Parry Airport that was located at the Distant Early Warning Line. The airport was listed as abandoned after the closure of the DEW line site.
McGill Arctic Research Station (Expedition Fiord) (MARS) is a small research station operated by McGill University located near the centre of Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut. It is located approximately 115 km (71 mi) southwest of Eureka, a weather and research station. It was first established in 1959 after scientists explored South Fiord (Expedition Fiord). The station contains a small hut, a cook house and two temporary structures. It can support 8-12 people and gives them access to the research activities. The current activities are glaciology, climate change, permafrost, hydrology, geology, geomorphology, limnology, planetary analogues, and microbiology. Today, the station is only used in the summer months so there would be enough power generated from the solar panels.
The Dr. Neil Trivett Global Atmosphere Watch Observatory is an atmospheric baseline station operated by Environment and Climate Change Canada located about 6 km (3.7 mi) south south-west of Alert, Nunavut, on the north-eastern tip of Ellesmere Island, about 800 km (500 mi) south of the geographic North Pole.
