Antarctica is the coldest place on earth, with temperatures at an average of -49°C, and it rarely ever gets above freezing. The reason why the Antarctic is so cold is because sunlight has to go through a thicker atmosphere to hit it as Earth is on an angle which also means the light rays are spread over a larger area than if they were hitting Antarctica directly. This means light is spread over a larger area thus not warming as much as it could.
When sunlight does eventually meet Antarctica, a lot of the rays are bounced off due to the Antarctic being made of very reflective, shiny white ice, and there are no clouds to trap any of the reflected heat. There are no clouds because the environment is so cold, and any water vapour instantly freezes.
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The fact that there are no clouds means that it very rarely rains on Antarctica, so the environment is very dry and no plants can grow, making all animals living there resort to other means of acquiring food. Since cold air sinks, the cold air in the middle of Antarctica runs down the mountains making katabatic winds, which can get up to 200km/h.
For every 1 knot of wind speed, the temperature is reduced by 1°C which makes the makes the already freezing temperatures even lower, and also makes Antarctica the windiest continent on earth.
Since the Earth is spinning tilted on an angle, Antarctica is either in constant sunlight, or constant darkness, making it only have two seasons: summer or winter. It is always dark in winter because Antarctica is on the side of the Earth which is spinning tilted away from the sun but it is the opposite in summer, Antarctica is tilted towards the sun so it is always sunny.
Since winter is in constant darkness, it is a lot colder as no sunlight is present to warm the continent, which means every animal living there has to have an adaption to help them live during the colder winters.
Animals first came to Antarctica for the extensive food supply, which were brought up by upwellings in the ocean which brought nutrients to the surface. This fed the fish there and attracting more due to their food supply, therefore attracted more animals due to the amount of fish. Every animal that lives there now had to adept to these extreme conditions, including the Emperor
penguin. Land To help protect the penguins against the cold environment, they have adapted hard feathers that cover their entire body forming a shell, and fluffy down feathers underneath which both help to trap air. This is good because air is a good insulator of heat as it isn’t a very good conductor, which keeps the penguins warm. The shell of feathers are hard to crush because if they crushed easily the insulating air would be let out meaning they could get cold again. This warmth is important because without the air insulating the penguins, they would be very cold and have to waste a lot of energy warming themselves up which is bad for these penguins who need to retain all the energy they can during especially during breeding seasons, where they go for months on end with no food. Since retaining heat is so important for the penguins, they have also adapted to be able to recapture 80% of the heat in their breath when they breath out via nasal passages. They also have black feathers on their back as the colour black absorbs the most light and therefore they would be warmer. both of these adaptations are used so they don’t spend so much energy making heat Emperor penguins are the largest of all penguins and very fat because if they were skinny and small, heat could easily escape from their body as it wouldn’t have to travel very far. They have a thick blubber layer which provides insulation which helps to keep them warm as there is more stopping the heat from escaping. (Emperor penguins’ flippers are poorly insulated, as they have very little blubber and not as many feathers trapping any heat, but they have lots of blood vessels which get warmed by veins in the body when returning from the flippers to retain heat in their core. same thing in legs. Since the penguins are so good at retaining heat, they can also…) When it is time for breeding which is during the Antarctic winter, Emperor penguins have to stay on land as they are still birds and lay eggs. The chicks are born in winter because if they were born in summer, they would not get enough nutrients essential for their growth as they would be left alone when the food supply is at it’s lowest. Since they are born in winter, the chicks can become independent when the food supply is high and be able to consume enough nutrients vital for their survival. Even though this aids the chicks survival, only about 19% of them will survive their first year due to other factors like exposure and predators. The penguins travel 50-120 km to the same place every year to breed, which is surrounded by mountains which can help protect them from the harsh winds during the coming winter. They have adapted very strong claws to help them make their journey which dig into the ice to ground them. They also slide on their stomachs when their feet get tired but they can’t do this for very long as more of them is touching the ice so they would get colder, and they would have to use a lot of energy to warm themselves back up. When resting the penguins have adapted so they can rock back on their heels and use their tail as a sort of tripod, which reduces the surface area that is touching the ice and meaning they do not get as cold. When the penguin has found a mate, they form a very strong bond as this will help to ensure the survival of a baby penguin. The penguins are not aggressively territorial, so they are fine with huddling which is a behavioural adaptation that keeps them warm. They do this by all huddling together in a group, and rotating as the penguins on the outside grow colder and the ones on the inside of the huddle have warmed up. If they did not do this they would use a lot of energy on warming themselves up and since they have to stay for months on end at the breeding ground it would make them burnt a lot more of their blubber which would mean they would grow even colder, thus having to use even more energy. As the emperor penguin can have up to 30% of it’s body weight as blubber, they try to conserve it over these four months as they don’t know how long they will be in their . a lot of the chicks die due to exposure When a female has an egg, it is kept under a skin fold under the penguin which keeps it at a warm temperature, and it rests on their feet which ensures no ice and therefore cold will touch it. They do this because there is no nesting material growing in Antarctica to have their egg on which would protect and incubate it. It is passed to the male to incubate which has to be done very quickly as it will freeze if left out in the open for too long, and the female makes the long journey to find seawater and food as the female has used up a lot of their energy making the egg and needs food more than the male does. The male has to incubate the egg while waiting for the female and by the time the chick hatches, the male would have gone 4 months without food. This is before they cannot leave in search of food while incubating the egg as it rests on their feet. Because of this, the male relies entirely on the body fat he stocked up on during the summer to keep him alive, which is why it is so important he uses as least energy as possible which would burn the least fat. To reserve the most energy possible, the penguins will sleep for 20 hours a day because you use less energy when you are asleep compared to when you are awake. When the female gets back, they chick is passed back to the female and the male who has lost over half his body weight makes his journey back to the ocean for food. The female pukes in the chicks mouth and so does the male As it gets warmer the ice starts to melt around the coast of Antarctica and the penguins don’t have to travel so far to find food. At this point they can start taking very short turns of looking after the chick and Ocean Since there is no food growing on land, the penguins have to travel to the ocean so they can feed. The ocean has an average temperature of -2°C to 2°C, but it varies depending on how much salt is present. If the temperature drops any lower than -2°C, it will turn into ice as that is what temperature salt water freezes at. cold adaptation The penguins had to adapt to the cold waters, and diving deep enough so they could find more food. When diving, their skin surface temperature is the same as the surrounding water but 5cm under the surface is the same temperature as their core. This is due to the thick layer of blubber which protects them from the cold because it is very insulating. Their fe breath + pressure Penguins dive up to 500m because they would be limiting themselves to the food available if they dived very shallowly. To be able to do this, they had to adapt to hold their breath for extended periods of time, and be able to deal with the pressure of being down that low. ith this they can stay submerged for 20 minutes
Isolation, loneliness, desertion-these synonymous attributes describe the scene of Antarctica. White blankets of ice and snow laid as far as the eye can see, with nothing else in sight. “Antarctica was a desert...Much of it was was still unexplored. There were no cities.” (pg 301). Although the term desert completely contradicts Antarctica, Laura Van Den
In conclusion the animals which exist in the extreme climates of the world have adapted to be able to live well in these habitats and will probably stay living in these habitats for a long time to come.
The planet we live in, the earth is a tiny composition in this huge universe. It has diversities ranging from highly variant temperature and pressure belts as well as various ecosystem types. One such remarkable feature of the earth is the polar ice caps. There are three major prominent features, the Antarctic ice on the South Pole, the Arctic ice on the North Pole and Greenland on the north between North America and Europe. Antarctica consist about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). It is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). The Arctic ice is not so thick in comparison and it mostly floats in the Arctic Ocean. Greenland, on the other hand would add another 7 meters (20 feet) to the oceans if it melted because Greenland is closer to the equator than Antarctica, the temperatures there are higher, so the ice is more likely to melt. Scientists from the Universities of London and Edinburgh say that ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland together contribute approximately 12 percent of the rise in sea levels. The melting of these enormous ice bodies can significantly impact the global changes in climate and reversely, this climate changes also impact the melting of the ice bodies. It is a two way process and the causes are mostly anthropogenic.
There are even times in the year when the sun doesn’t come up for days. In the tundra we have little snow and even less rainfall. The rainfall is about a quarter inch of yearly rainfall. Even though the tundra’s winters are long and harsh, summers are the shortest season of all. Due to the terrible weather and climate in the tundra, their animal and plant life is very limited.
The winter will last 8 to 10 months followed by the short and much less cold summer. During the summer some lower areas of the Tundra will defrost at which point most of the flora and fauna will start to creep out of hiding. The few summer months are used by many animals such as the polar bear, to mate and to prepare for the once again oncoming winter. During the winter months, most everything remains frozen. Many of the animals migrate south for the winter whereas some stay behind or even group together for ritual group suicide (lemmings).
These penguins lived after the Castastrophic event “Cretaceuous” that demolished the dinosaurs and many other species. Based on the DNA analyses and avaiable evidence of modern birds, we think the modern bird- lineages, including penguins, some how managed to survive through the Cretaceuous. Also it’s not shocking these fossils were found in New Zeland. The South Pacific and Southern oceans were free of predatory mammals, had abundant food, and had space for Penguins to breed. But the Southern Pacific is not the only area where Penguins inhabit. Many of modern penguins “Aptrenodytes” are located in the Antarctic. Recenelty it was discovered that there was a over looked feature on the surface of the fossil penguins flipper bone. These grooves were easily missed because the look was similar to tendons and muscles in the same area. It was discovered that these grooves were blood vessels that make up a counter current heat exchanger called “humeral arterial plexus” which allows penguins to limit the heat loss through the flippers. Also it helped Penguins maintain their core body temperature in cold water allowing them to survive long journeys in the cold waters. Although Penguins have luckily been able develop these traits to survive the dramatic shifts in climate, the world population can not mistake their success as resilience towards global warming.
The ice caps are the most extreme climates on earth. They are located at the north and south poles. These poles are
Arctic tundra is located in the northern hemisphere, encircling the North Pole and extending south to the Coniferous forests of the Taiga. The arctic is known for its cold, desert-like conditions. The growing season ranges from 50 to 60 days. The average winter temperature is -34° C (-30° F), but the average summer temperature is 3-12° C (37-54° F), which enables this biome to sustain life. Rainfall may vary in different regions of the arctic. Yearly precipitation, including mel...
Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first report in 1990, the international community has known “emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide.” (IPCC, 1990). The emissions put into the atmosphere by human actions will further the greenhouse effect that results in a warmer planet. This paper will examine how global warming may impact the Polar Jet Stream seen in fig.1, while exploring feedback loops that may or not be further destabilizing the band of high winds in the upper atmosphere that drives weather systems.
Ocean currents have been known to change direction or slow down. The heat that escapes from the oceans is in the form of water vapor, the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth. Yet, water vapor also contributes to the formation of clouds and has a net cooling effect.
One way that the environment impacts the animals is that the animals such as bears adapt and store their energy in the winter. This is also known as hibernating. “Animals in the mountains have also adapted to save energy during the harsh winter months.” (Cassandra Maier, Adaptations of plants and animals to mountains) When animals hibernate, they are less active during the winter, and they just sleep for most of the day. Other animals such as the goat and deer do not hibernate during the winter,
... happened these caused hominids to get smarter and then evolve to use tools, start fires, hunt, and trap, grow crops, and build houses. This goes back to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. If they did not evolve to survive the cold then the may have died before being able to pass of there geans and then the species would die out.
One huge impact of global warming is the change in animals’ habitats. When the earth’s temperature is increasing, it creates the change of weather conditions in a certain area, which causes some kinds of animals in this area to live with many difficulties, or sometimes those kinds of animals are forced to move to new region when they cannot handle the difficulties. The arctic fox is an example for this situation. According to the article “How Does Global Warming Affect Wildlife,” arctic foxes prefer to live in the cooler environment while their habitat is getting warmer and warmer due to global warming, so arctic foxes have to leave their own home to seek a more suitable area (National W...
...an others, and many species may become extinct. Pests, diseases and invasive species may also increase due to the climate change that occurs. Climate change may bring population growth to the area due to the warmer climate and more livable conditions, which may become problematic to maintain and these growing outside influences will also effect the culture of the people currently living in the area.
earth. Many species live in cold areas, but with the climate rising those areas are becoming