Arctic Facts

The Arctic is not a continent. We decided to list the Arctic because it includes the North Pole and a least on famous resident.


The Arctic is the region that is north of the Arctic Circle, which encompasses the Earth
at 66 degrees, 32 minutes North latitude.

The Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean, and parts of the United States (Alaska),
Canada, Greenland, and Russia.

Greenland, is covered by a 1 mile thick slab of ice.

Greenland received its name from the Vikings who were trying to attract settlers. Most of the Viking settlers died.

The Arctic is primarily a thick flow of ice over an ocean.

There are 36,563 islands in the Canadian Arctic. The biggest is Baffin Island,
which is about one-quarter the size of Greenland.

There are approximately 1.5 million people in the Arctic.

The land from the north pole down to the northern forests are known as the tundra.

More fish live along the edges of the Arctic ocean than anywhere else on Earth.

The Arctic ice sheet is four times as large as the state of Texas.

The Arctic Ocean is the world’s smallest.

It is roughly 8 percent the size of the Pacific Ocean.

At the North Pole, the average summer temperature is around 0ºC and the
average winter temperature is about -30ºC at the North Pole.

During summer, the temperature can climb to plus 50 degrees.

The coldest temperature in the Arctic (though not the coldest temperature
recorded on Earth) was -94ºF (-67.8ºC) at the village of Verkhoyansk,
Siberia.

The Arctic gets roughly 8 inches of rain a year.

The Arctic is the only place polar bears live.

Unlike Antarctica, people live in the Arctic Circle.

Norilsk, Russia is the farthest northern city and the coldest with an average temperature twenty degrees below zero.

The Titanic struck an iceberg from the Arctic.






The elevation at the North Pole is 3 feet of sea ice (now, does that really
count??). The bedrock at the North Pole is 1400 feet below sea level.