The Earth Story

Original caption:

"During summertime, the sun never sets above the arctic circle. This time-lapse video aims to show the special light that appears during the midnight hours when the sun nearly touches the horizon. All in glorious 8K resolution."

Siberian Heat Wave This is a plot of average global surface temperatures for the first 5 months of 2020 – over 75% of the Earth’s surface was above its long-term average temperature, and this time period has been the warmest January-May that humans have recorded. Notice the gigantic red spot over Siberia? Right now, Siberia is experiencing some of the warmest conditions that area has seen since records began, building on the temperature extremes from earlier this year.

Original caption:

Aurora spiral over Norway The wonderful green spiral was snapped over the rock of Bleik Island 300km inside the Arctic circle. The image was taken from the neighbouring isle of Andoya, a peat covered expanse with some mountains rising above the bogs. The colour is emitted by excited atoms of nitrogen a hundred kilometres up as they are tickled by the energy of a solar flare event. Bleik is famed for one of Europe's largest puffin colonies. Loz Image credit: Frank Olsen via EPOD

Original caption:

Shot north of the Arctic Circle in the summer - the sun in the sky spins around this location and the camera pivots seemlessly with it. 

This is pretty majestic. I’ll let the videographer speak on this:

Looking for a holiday in the sun? How about sunshine for 24 hours a day for up to 6 straight months of the year?

The natural phenomenon where the sun doesn’t dip below the horizon at local midnight meaning 24-hours of daylight is called “The midnight Sun”.

Northern and Southern hemispheres each tilt toward and away from the Sun during their respective summers and winters much more than areas around the equator where the angle remains much closer to perpendicular and more constant. Therefore larger seasonal variations are found the further you go away from the equator and closer towards each of the poles.

During the summer solstices in the Northern Arctic Circle and the Southern Antarctic Circle the tilt of each hemisphere’s polar circle is angled towards the Sun and remains so throughout the 24-hour period it takes to complete a single rotation of the Earth. This means that a person who is standing within a polar circle at summer solstice of the respective hemisphere would not see the Sun dip below the horizon, it would appear to dip nearer the horizon as it approached midnight local time and then begin to rise again once local midnight had passed.

The number of days per year that midnight Sun will occur will increase the further one goes into the polar circles and towards the respective pole. Taking the Arctic circle as an example the Northern most inhabited Island of Svalbard, Norway experiences no sunset and constant daylight from 19th April to 23rd August each year. The North Pole itself has only one sunrise and one sunset a year and spends 6 straight months in daylight.

The opposite natural phenomenon that occurs during winter months is known as “Polar night” and occurs in the same way with up to 6 straight months of no Sun and darkness at each pole.

-Matt J

Photo shows a time lapse as the time approaches local midnight and after it: http://www.placesmustseen.com/?p=302 http://bit.ly/1MITFAd

The disappeared bank of gravel

Odaaq, a gravel bank on the northeastern side of Greenland, used to be the northernmost point of land (also known as ‘Ultima Thule’) at 83°40′N 30°40′W. Well, that is if you would consider a bank of gravel a piece of land; at its discovery in 1978 it measured 15 by 8 meters. It was named after the Inuit that led the Danish team to the gravel bank. However, since then several expeditions have claimed that Odaaq has disappeared and it has been a while since it was last reported to exist. The shifting ice, the melting ice and the changing water conditions could have something to do with its disappearance.

Are there any other candidates for the northernmost point? Well, there is ATW1996 (they are not even properly naming these semi-permanent pieces of land anymore) at 83°40′34.8″N 30°38′38.6″W, of 10km width and one meter height, and the island of 83-42 at 83°42′05.2″N 30°38′49.4″W. Its discoverer Dennis Smith said he would not name the island, because he thought Greenland should name their own territories. However, both of these gravelbanks are again not-permanent, although 83-42 was found with lichen growing on it. In 2007, the newest candidate for Ultima Thule was discovered by explorer Dennis Schmidt at 83°40'30" N, and was named Stray Dog West, but that is also a piece of semi-permanent land.

So, the official guidelines for a northernmost point are that the land has to be permanent. Thus, there is only one candidate left: Kaffeklubben Island (Inuit Qeqertaat and English Coffeeclub island) at 83°40′N 29°50′W with a height of 30m, a length of 700m and a width of max. 300m. A Canadian team calculated that the northernmost tip of Kaffeklubben Island lies 750m farther north than Cape Morris Jesup (first believed to be the northernmost).

Well, this settles it then…

-OW-

Image: Copyright DmitTrix. Odaaq in 2003.

Read more: Jancik, John; Richardson, Javana; & Gardiner, Steve (2002). Under the Midnight Sun: The Ascent of John Denver Peak and the Search for the Northernmost Point of Land on Earth. Stars End Creations. http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2012-02-16/ultima-thule-83-42-arctic-greenland-ken-jennings http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-flowers-of-kaffeklubben-island

50-MILLION-YEAR-OLD PIECE OF REDWOOD FOUND IN KIMBERLITE PIPE The piece of Early Eocene wood was discovered sealed in a volcanic rock in Canada’s far north. The specimen also contains a sliver of amber, and shows that the now-icy region was once far swampier.  The wood was found a few years ago in the Panda pipe, one of approximately 150 pipes in the Lac de Gras field with emplacement ages ranging from 45 to 75 Ma. The Panda pipe at the Ekati diamond mine, just south of the Arctic Circle, is a kimberlite pipe that intruded northwestern Canada’s Slave Province; it has a relatively small diameter of around 200 metres. Kimberlite pipes form when kimberlite magma ascends from the mantle through deep fractures in the Earth’s crust and create vertical tubelike structures; kimberlites have the deepest origins of all magma on Earth and can leave diamonds.  The site of the Panda pipe was once covered with a forest of Metasequoia (Cupressaceae), similar to today's dawn redwoods, during the early Eocene. Wood is common within the first 300 metres of the Panda pipe. The kimberlite eruption which created the Panda pipe occurred 53.3±0.6 million years ago (Ma), and created a hole in the Earth’s surface, where some of these redwoods fell in and settled into volcaniclastic kimberlite to depths >300 metres. When the volcanic rock cooled, the wood was trapped inside.  This specimen, found at a depth of 315 metres below the Earth’s surface, may be the oldest of its kind found in the region, even surpassing wood from the Axel Heiberg fossil forest in northern Canada by millions of years. It is certainly the best preserved for its age; glaciation in this region have eliminated many other sedimentary rocks and fossils. The researchers measured the ratio of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in the wood’s cellulose; this showed that western Canadian subarctic temperatures were 12°C to 17°C warmer and four times wetter than they are today. The left-hand image (D) is of fossil wood encrusted in olivine-rich volcaniclastic kimberlite. The right-hand image (E) is a photograph of the specimen used in this research. The wood was split when removed from the ore, revealing a sliver of opaque amber (9.5 cm long by 0.5 cm wide) in the xylem. -TEL http://www.livescience.com/23374-fossil-forest-redwood-diamond-mine.html;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045537 Image credit: PLoS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045537.g001