The North Pole is the northernmost point on the Earth, lying diametrically opposite the South Pole. It defines geodetic latitude 90° North, as well as the direction of true north. The nearest land is usually said to be Kaffeklubben Island, off the northern coast of Greenland about 700 km away. The Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice.
About North Pole in brief
The North Pole is the northernmost point on the Earth, lying diametrically opposite the South Pole. It defines geodetic latitude 90° North, as well as the direction of true north. The nearest land is usually said to be Kaffeklubben Island, off the northern coast of Greenland about 700 km away. The sea depth at the North Pole has been measured at 4,261 m by the Russian Mir submersible in 2007 and at 4,087 m by USS Nautilus in 1958. Studies in the 2000s predicted that the North pole may become seasonally ice-free because of Arctic ice shrinkage, with timescales varying from 2016 to the late 21st century or later. It is desirable to tie the system of Earth coordinates to fixed landforms. However, given plate tectonics and isostasy, there is no system in which all geographic features are fixed. The exact point of intersection of the Earth’s axis and the surface, at any given moment, is called the instantaneous pole. This cannot be used as a definition of a fixed North Pole when metre-scale precision is required. The Soviet Union, and later Russia, constructed a number of manned drifting stations on a generally annual basis since 1937. Since 2002, the Russians have also annually established a base, Barneo, close to the Pole, this operates for a few weeks during early spring. One of the earliest expeditions to set out with the explicit intention of reaching North Pole was that of British naval officer William Edward Parry in 1827.
It was hoped that passage could be found through ice floes at favorable times of the year. Several expeditions set out to find the way, generally with whaling ships, with the earliest commonly used in the 19th century being the Polynya or Open Polar Sea. The first undisputed expedition to reach the Pole was the airship Norge, which overflew the area in 1926 with 16 men on board, including expedition leader Roald Amundsen. Three prior expeditions – led by Frederick Cook, Robert Peary and Richard E. Byrd – were once also accepted as having reached the Pole. In each case later analysis of expedition data has cast doubt upon the accuracy of their claims. The Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice. While the South pole lies on a continental land mass, the North poles are located in an area that is permanently covered by ice. The North Pole can be defined as any degree value. Along tight latitude circles, counterclockwise is east and clockwise is west. The nearest permanently inhabited place is Alert in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada, which is located 817 km from the Pole and is about 700km from the pole. The pole is also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole.
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This page is based on the article North Pole published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
