North Pole

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Attempts to reach the North Pole began in the late 19th century, with the record for 'Farthest North' being surpassed on numerous occasions. The first undisputed expedition to reach the North Pole was that of the airship Norge, which overflew the area in 1926 with 16 men on board, including expedition leader Roald Amundsen. Three prior expeditions – led by Frederick Cook (1908, land), Robert Peary (1909, land) and Richard E. Byrd (1926, aerial) – were once also accepted as having reached the Pole. However, in each case later analysis of expedition data has cast doubt upon the accuracy of their claims. The first verified individuals to reach the North Pole on foot was in 1948 by a 24-man Soviet party, part of Aleksandr Kuznetsov's Sever-2 expedition to the Arctic, who flew near to the Pole first before making the final trek to the Pole on foot. The first complete land expedition to reach the North Pole was in 1968 by Ralph Plaisted, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, using snowmobiles and with air support. Earlier attempts include William Edward Parry in 1827 reaching latitude 82°45′ North, and Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen reaching 86°14′ North in 1895. In 1897, Swedish engineer Salomon August Andrée and two companions tried to reach the North Pole in the hydrogen balloon Örnen ('Eagle'), but came down 300 km (190 mi) north of Kvitøya; they trekked to Kvitøya but died there three months after their crash. The Italian explorer Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi and Captain Umberto Cagni reached latitude 86° 34’ on 25 April 1900, setting a new record.

Reader's Guide

The North Pole holds significance as a geographic and symbolic endpoint of Earth's axis. Its remote location in the shifting sea ice of the Arctic Ocean makes permanent habitation impractical, unlike the South Pole. The sea depth at the North Pole has been measured at 4,261 m (13,980 ft) by the Russian Mir submersible in 2007 and at 4,087 m (13,409 ft) by USS Nautilus in 1958. This makes it impractical to construct a permanent station at the North Pole (unlike the South Pole). However, the Soviet Union, and later Russia, constructed a number of manned drifting stations on a generally annual basis since 1937, some of which have passed over or very close to the Pole. Since 2002, a group of Russians have also annually established a private base, Barneo, close to the Pole. This operates for a few weeks during early spring. Studies in the 2000s predicted that the North Pole may become seasonally ice-free because of Arctic ice shrinkage, with timescales varying from 2016 to the late 21st century or later. The precise definition of the North Pole is complicated by the Chandler wobble, a periodic variation in the Earth's axis of rotation with a period of about 435 days, discovered in the 20th century. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and the International Astronomical Union have defined a framework called the International Terrestrial Reference System to tie Earth coordinates to fixed landforms.

Did You Know?

• At the North Pole all directions point south; all lines of longitude converge there, so its longitude can be defined as any degree value.
• No time zone has been assigned to the North Pole, so any time can be used as the local time.
• The sea depth at the North Pole was measured at 4,261 m by the Russian Mir submersible in 2007 and at 4,087 m by USS Nautilus in 1958.
• The first complete land expedition to reach the North Pole was in 1968 by Ralph Plaisted, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, using snowmobiles and with air support.
• The Earth's axis of rotation wobbles slightly; this was predicted by mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century and later confirmed as the Chandler wobble with a period of about 435 days.