Arctic and alpine environments

With the world to pick from, why do some geographers choose to study cold places? Arctic and alpine regions have a certain fascination, and contain true wilderness areas and awe-inspiring landscapes. Cold environments are covered by all A-level courses and this article is relevant to options on cold environments, extreme environments and glacial environments. It considers arctic and alpine environments in terms of their climate, geomorphology and biogeography.

Mark Hayward

The Italian Alps

What and where are arctic and alpine environments, and what are their similarities and differences? It is common to use lower-case letters for the adjectives artic and alpine, and capital letters for the names of the locations: the Arctic and the Alps. Both types of locality are associated with low average temperatures, and may be mapped together, for example the tundra climate in Köppen’s classification, regularly used in atlases. They also have similarities in geomorphology and biogeography, but it is more convenient to define, describe and explain them separately. This article concentrates on the northern hemisphere.

The ancient Greeks, who could be said to have invented geography, used the word Arktikos for the northern constellation of the Great Bear. The simplest way to define arctic environments is to say that they are inside the Arctic Circle (66º33ʹ39ʺ North with the Earth’s present orbital inclination). Figure 1 shows a polar projection with the Arctic Circle indicated. A bit of thought will suggest that this line on its own is unlikely to be a satisfactory definition in detail — there will not be a sudden change in climate on either side of it. However, it does provide a precisely defined boundary. North of the Arctic Circle the sun fails to set on the summer solstice and fails to rise at the winter solstice. The further north you travel, the longer the summer daylight and winter night.