Word: icecaps
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...files show that there is no "Santa Claus" living anywhere in North America. The one "Chris Cringle" I was able to locate is an inmate in a Flat Pig, Missouri, insane asylum. Perhaps Santa lives in the North Pole, you say. Guess again. Military satellite photos of the icecap have shown no evidence of Santa's workshop anywhere above the 66th parallel. A brief glimmer of hope for believers occurred in 1958, when a NATO radar team on patrol spotted a large mansion and toy factory. However, experts soon discovered this "Christmas Kingdom" to be nothing more than an abandoned...
...were joined by a third explorer, Oliver Shepard, 37, for the first half of the journey, crossed the Sahara by Land Rover before meeting their ship in the Ivory Coast. In Antarctica, the three men proceeded to cross the continent, including more than 1,000 miles of previously uncharted icecap, by snowmobile in a record 66 days. After reaching the South Pole, the team ascended and descended the 9,750-ft. Scott Glacier. Said Burton: "Nobody who wasn't there, who has not felt the deadly lurch of snow giving way, hasn't seen the endless white...
More disturbing, some scientists have cautioned that if the Arctic Ocean is not replenished by fresh water, it will get salt ier, its freezing point will drop, and the icecap will begin to melt, possibly starting a global warming trend. Other scientists fear that just the opposite may occur: as the flow of warmer fresh water is reduced, the polar ice may expand. In any case, British Climatologist Michael Kelly of the University of East Anglia sees an ironic consequence: changes in polar winds and currents might reduce rainfall in the very regions to benefit from the river...
...Easter Sunday, some 50,000 miles later, the adventurers raced the spring thaw to their penultimate destination, the top of the world. Though a hazardous voyage back to Greenwich over quickly melting ice still lies ahead, Fiennes was exuberant. He rammed a slightly frozen Union Jack into the icecap, then scrambled to unpack their celebratory feast: a chocolate Easter egg and a magnum of champagne, which at that latitude was, of course, "nicely chilled...
Though Antarctica gets less precipitation than the Sahara (less than 2 in. a year), nearly two-thirds of the world's fresh water is locked up in the polar icecap. Even bacteria are barely able to cling to life in the interior, but the coastal regions abound with seals and penguins, to say nothing of the whales that come from round the world to winter in Antarctica's icy, protein-rich waters...