North Pole

The North Pole, sometimes called the Geographic or Terrestrial North Pole, marks the spot in the Northern Hemisphere where the planet’s rotational axis meets the surface. It is the farthest north point on Earth, directly opposite the South Pole, and sits at 90° North latitude. Unlike the South Pole, which rests on a continent, the North Pole lies in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, surrounded by water that is almost always covered in drifting sea ice.

Because all lines of longitude converge here, the North Pole has no fixed longitude—any value works—and all directions from it point south. It also has no assigned time zone, so any time can be used locally.

On tight latitude circles, going counterclockwise is east and clockwise is west. The nearest land is Kaffeklubben Island, off Greenland’s north coast, about 700 kilometers away, though some semi-permanent gravel banks are slightly closer. The closest permanently inhabited place is Alert, on Canada’s Ellesmere Island, 817 kilometers from the Pole.

The sea depth at the North Pole has been measured twice: at 4,261 meters by a Russian submersible in 2007, and at 4,087 meters by the USS Nautilus in 1958. This depth makes a permanent station impractical, unlike at the South Pole.

Still, the Soviet Union and later Russia have operated manned drifting stations on a mostly annual basis since 1937, some passing over or very near the Pole. Since 2002, a private Russian base called Barneo has been set up near the Pole each year for a few weeks in early spring. Studies in the 2000s predicted that the North Pole could become seasonally ice-free due to Arctic ice shrinkage, with estimates ranging from 2016 to the late 21st century or later.

Attempts to reach the North Pole started in the late 1800s, with the “Farthest North” record broken many times. The first undisputed arrival was by the airship Norge in 1926, which flew over the area with 16 men, including leader Roald Amundsen.

Three earlier expeditions—by Frederick Cook (1908, land), Robert Peary (1909, land), and Richard E. Byrd (1926, aerial)—were once accepted but later doubted after analysis of their data. The first verified people to reach the Pole on foot were a 24-man Soviet team in 1948, part of Aleksandr Kuznetsov’s Sever-2 expedition; they flew close, then walked the final stretch. The first complete land expedition to reach the Pole on foot was in 1968 by Ralph Plaisted, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl, and Jean-Luc Bombardier, using snowmobiles and air support.

The Earth’s axis—and thus the North Pole’s position—was long thought fixed until the 18th century, when mathematician Leonhard Euler predicted a slight wobble. Around 1900, astronomers noticed a small “variation of latitude” from star observations, partly due to the Pole wandering a few meters across the surface. This wandering has several periodic and irregular components.

One component, with a period of about 435 days, matches Euler’s prediction and is called the Chandler wobble. The exact intersection of the axis and surface at any moment is the “instantaneous pole,” but the wobble prevents using it as a fixed definition when meter-scale precision is needed. To tie Earth coordinates to stable landforms, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and the International Astronomical Union created the International Terrestrial Reference System, though plate tectonics and isostasy mean no system is perfectly fixed.

Pre-1900

In the 16th century, many believed the North Pole lay in an open sea, called the Polynya or Open Polar Sea, hoping for a passage through ice at favorable times. Expeditions often used whaling ships. One of the earliest explicit attempts to reach the Pole was by British naval officer William Edward Parry in 1827, who reached 82°45′ North. The 1871 Polaris expedition, a U.S. attempt led by Charles Francis Hall, ended in disaster.

Another British Royal Navy try, part of the British Arctic Expedition under Commander Albert H. Markham, reached a record 83°20'26" North in May 1876 before turning back. An 1879–1881 expedition by U.S. Navy officer George W. De Long ended tragically when the USS Jeannette was crushed by ice; over half the crew, including De Long, died. In April 1895, Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen skied for the Pole after leaving Nansen’s icebound ship Fram, reaching 86°14′ North.