Life at the Ends of the Earth: The Polar Biome

Imagine standing outside in weather so cold that the air itself can freeze your skin in minutes. The ground beneath your feet has been frozen solid for thousands of years. The sun sometimes doesn't set for weeks — or doesn't rise for weeks. Where on Earth could this be? Think about it before we dive in.

A biome is a large region of the world that shares the same climate, plants, and animals. The polar biome is the coldest and windiest biome on Earth. It is found at the very top and very bottom of our planet — the Arctic in the north and Antarctica in the south. The Arctic sits around the North Pole. It includes the frozen Arctic Ocean, parts of northern Canada, Russia, Norway, and Greenland. Antarctica surrounds the South Pole and is a whole continent covered in thick ice. The climate in the polar biome is extreme. Temperatures can drop as low as −89°C in Antarctica — that is far colder than your freezer at home. In winter, some polar regions have no sunlight at all for months. In summer, the sun can shine all day and night without setting. This is called the midnight sun. The ground in many polar areas is called permafrost. This means the soil stays frozen all year round, even when the top layer melts a little in summer. Very few plants can grow here. You might find low mosses and tiny flowering plants in the Arctic, but Antarctica has almost no plants at all. Yet animals do survive here. In the Arctic you find polar bears, Arctic foxes, walruses, and reindeer. In Antarctica, penguins, seals, and whales thrive in the icy waters. These animals are adapted — they have special features that help them survive, like thick fur, layers of fat called blubber, and white colouring to blend into the snow.