Polar regions
regions around the Earth's geographical poles
The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North Pole and the South Pole), lying within the polar circles. These high latitudes are dominated by floating sea ice covering much of the Arctic Ocean in the north, and by the Antarctic ice sheet on the continent of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in the south.
Definitions
The Arctic has various definitions, including the region north of the Arctic Circle (currently Epoch 2010 at 66°33'44" N), or just the region north of 60° north latitude, or the region from the North Pole south to the timberline. The Antarctic is usually defined simply as south of 60° south latitude, or the continent of Antarctica. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty uses the former definition.
The two polar regions are distinguished from the other two climatic and biometric belts of Earth, a tropics belt near the equator, and two middle latitude regions located between the tropics and polar regions.
Climate
Polar regions receive less intense solar radiation than the other parts of Earth because the Sun's energy arrives at an oblique angle, spreading over a larger area, being less concentrated, and also travels a longer distance through Earth's atmosphere in which it may be absorbed, scattered or reflected, which is the same thing that causes winters to be colder than the rest of the year except in tropical regions.
The axial tilt of Earth has the most effect on climate of the polar regions due to its latitude. However, since the polar regions are the farthest from the equator, they receive the weakest solar radiation and are therefore generally frigid year round due to Earth's axial tilt of 23.5° not being enough to create a high maximum midday declination to sufficiently compensate the Sun's rays for the high latitude even in summer, except for relatively brief periods in peripheral areas near the polar circles. The large amount of ice and snow also reflects and weakens of what weak sunlight the polar regions receive further, contributing to the cold.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60670. VIAF identifies the subject as 316430241. The Library of Congress control number is sh85104136. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Polar regions” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.