Help building the largest human-edited directory of the web Suggest URL - Open Directory Project - Become an editor

directopedia.org uses links and structure from dmoz Open Directory Project.
The contents has been generating using technology developed by scientec.

Earth's polar regions are the areas of the globe surrounding the poles, north of the Arctic circle, or south of the Antarctic Circle. They are characterised by the polar climate, extremely cold temperatures, heavy glaciation, and extreme variations in daylight hours, with 24 hour daylight in summer (the midnight sun), and permanent darkness at mid-winter. The North Pole and South Pole being the centres, these regions are dominated by the polar ice caps, resting respectively on ocean and the continent of Antarctica.

There are many settlements in Earth's north polar regions, but none except for scientific bases in the south polar regions, which are colder than the northern polar regions.

Other planets and natural satellites in the solar system have interesting quirks about their polar regions. Earth's Moon is thought to contain substantial deposits of ice in deep craters in its polar regions, which never see direct sunlight. Mars, like Earth, has polar caps, but unlike Earth's icy caps they consist mostly of carbon dioxide. On Uranus, meanwhile, the extreme tilt of the planet's axis leads to the unique situation during the Uranian year of first one pole and then the other pointing almost directly at the Sun.

See also: geographical pole, North Pole, South Pole, Antarctica ecozone

Regions of the World
Africa:	Central Africa | East Africa | Great Lakes | Guinea | Horn of Africa | North Africa | Maghreb | Northwest Africa | Sahel | Southern Africa | Sub-Saharan Africa | Sudan | West Africa
Americas:	Andean states | Caribbean | Central America | Great Lakes | Great Plains | Guianas | Latin America | North America | Northern America | Patagonia | South America | Southern Cone
Eurasia:	Anatolia | Arabia | Asia | Balkans | Baltic region | Benelux | British Isles | Caucasus | Central Asia | Central Europe | East Asia | Eastern Europe | East Indies | Europe | Far East | Indian subcontinent | Levant | Mediterranean | Middle East | Near East | North Asia | Northern Europe | Post-Soviet states | Scandinavia | Southeast Asia | Southern Europe | Southwest Asia | Western Europe
Oceania:	Australasia | Melanesia | Micronesia | Polynesia | Pacific Rim
Polar:	Arctic | Antarctic

This article is based on the article "Polar Regions" from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. Here you find the list of authors of this article. The article can only edited within Wikipedia. Edit this article in Wikipedia.