ENVS 15: Environmental Issues of the Earth's Cold Regions

Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research seeks to advance understanding of the rapid environmental change occurring in cold regions through research into past, present, and future high-latitude and mountain regions. The journal publishes research from a diverse group of international authors from academia, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. ...

Antarctica originally formed part of the southern supercontinent, Gondwana, and its fossil record shows that the continent hosted cool temperate and even subtropical forests, dinosaurs, early mammals, and many other biota, despite lying at high southern paleolatitudes for over 100 My. The Antarctica of today is a continent of extremes, inspiring awe, trepidation, and superlatives from those privileged to experience it. ...

Greek philosophers suggested the existence of a southern landmass (Antarktikos) to “balance” the weight of lands known to exist in the Northern Hemisphere (under the constellation of Arktos). The existence of the continent remained a matter of speculation for a long time, and even Captain James Cook (b. 1728–d. 1779), who crossed the Antarctic Circle in January 1773, failed to see the Terra Australis Incognita. At last, the reports from the “heroic era” expeditions (1895–1915) convinced most geographers that the scattered landfalls marked the edge of a continent. ...

Arctic climatology involves the study of complex and dynamic land-ocean-atmosphere interactions across semipermanently frozen northern high-latitude environments. These areas, approximately confined within the polar cell (north of 60°N), comprise a vast portion of the semipermanent boreal cryosphere and are particularly sensitive to climatic fluctuations and changes at regional to global scales, phase variations in the local and remote modes of ocean-atmosphere variability, and transient weather patterns that transfer heat and moisture to and from the region. ...

Originally a topic for explorers and scientists, driven by quest for territory, fame, and recognition, polar geography was a field for those who were willing to brave extreme weather conditions in the name of science and empire, and who were backed by foundations with funding to mount the extraordinary costs of an expedition. Up to the second half of the 20th century, academic geographers primarily engaged with polar regions in ways that focused on science. Barry (1983), published in the Annals of the AAG, summarized “polar geography” as a field for physical geographers. “Arctic Ocean Ice and Climate: Perspectives on a Century of Polar Research” spoke to ice and “large-scale ice-climate interactions” and “potential human-induced impacts on the Arctic ice regime” but was in no way a human geography. Similarly, Sudgen 1982 (cited under Books and Edited Volumes) attempted to redirect this interest and identified a range of issues and topics in “polar geography” of potential interest to both human and physical geographers. By and large, however, until fairly recently, human geographers were more interested in the Arctic than Antarctic, except for matters related to boundary delineation. ...

The polar regions have gained the attention of scientists and the general public alike, especially since explorers first visited these remote and inhospitable places, characterized by the most extreme climatic conditions on Earth, and reported their fascination about them. Scientific research, in the modern sense, however, started little more than one hundred years ago, with Fridtjof Nansen’s seminal Fram expedition to the Arctic Ocean (1893–1896).