Arctic

People call the Arctic the area around the North Pole, it is the point that lies furthest to the north. While the South Pole lies on the continent Antarctica, the North Pole only consists of water. The Arctic Ocean is frozen throughout the whole year.

It's hard to say exactly were the Arctic is located. A lot of researchers think that there is a Pacific border: The Arctic ends where even in July it doesn't get hotter than 10 degrees Celsius. That is about as cold as a fall day in Germany. The border doesn't only go through the Pacific Ocean, but also part of North America, Europe and Asia.  

In the Arctic it gets really cold. There is snow almost everywhere, but only in the southern part of the Arctic the snow and the ice melt away in the summer. There is only a small number of plants in the Arctic and there are also not many animals or humans.

For a long time, people in Europe didn't know about the Arctic until around the 19th century people started to venture further north with sleds and boats. In 1909, a group of North Americans claimed that they reached the North Pole. You cannot prove that this happened though. But in 1937 a Russian explorer flew to the Arctic and he landed. This was the first time that people knew that someone went to the Arctic.  

Global warming is strongly affecting the Arctic; a lot of ice is melting there. Because of that the sea level is rising all over the world. A lot of small ice chunks are floating all over the water. That makes it a lot harder for polar bears and their cubs to move around freely on the ice. The global warming also affects a lot of other animals.