even colder stuff : north and seriously north

Many years ago there's a big chunk of Canadian territory up north, called the Northwest Territories.  It comprises of the northern continental Canada and the Arctic archipelago.  As time went on, the region was divided, and the territory called "Nunavut" was formed.  It's an odd name coming from a country with both English and French as their official languages.  Only later did I know that this was actually  a landmark change in the political map of Canada.  The reason is that it is a territory formed for the country's Inuit people. Thus, making it a notable historical development globally, especially involving the world's indigenous people.

Photo Credit: Mark Beauregard (no edits; license)

Much of the Arctic archipelago is incorporated within Nunavut, and as an archipelago, the islands look huge on the map, speaking of Mercator projection. Regardless of that, however, many islands are actually big.  The top 5 islands in terms of area (in sq. km.) are:

• Baffin - 507,451
• Victoria Island - 217,291
• Ellesmere - 196,236
• Banks Island - 70,028
• Devon Island - 55,247

Photo Credit : Derrick Midwinter (no changes; license)

The top three are bigger than Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines at 109,965 sq. km. So, one may wonder if they are also densely populated as well.  You bet, no.  In the warmest community of the region, Kugluktuk, the temperature during winter ranges from -15°C to -40°C, and then there's extensive permafrost, meaning perpetually frozen ground, which prevents vertical growth of trees and other plants.  Imagine a large region having this type of climate.  From above, it will look like a vast barren landscape, interrupted by hills and mountains, cut by rivers, and in continental Canada, splattered with numerous lakes.

Photo Credit : Steve Stayles (no edits; license)

Taking a look at the top 5 largest communities - or refered to as municipalities - in Nunavut as of 2016, it would really take a long time, hypothetically, before we could see a sprawling metropolis in the Arctic:

Iqaluit - 7,086

Rankin Inlet - 2,441

Arviat - 2,318

Baker Lake - 1,872

Cambridge Bay - 1,619

Nunavut as a territory covers 1,936,113 sq. km. of land, but the population as of 2016 is only 35,944.   This gives us a density of 0.0186 person per square kilometer; or, if they divide the land among themselves, each person would own 53.9 sq. km. of land, which is the size of a small city.

Photo Credit: Fiona Hunt                             Iqaluit, NU                            (license; no edits)

Photo Credit: Michael Swan          Rankin Inlet, NU        (license; no edits)

Given this vast land, relatively very small population, and extreme climate, it is indeed impractical to build extensive road networks.  Thus, each of these municipalities has an airport that would connect them to the rest of Canada.  Currently, Nunavut has 25 municipalities; only one is considered a city, which is Iqaluit, and the rest are categorized as hamlets.  It is interesting, however, that they have other categories called "village" and "town".  You may guess it right that these are the previous designations of Iqaluit on its way to being categorized as a "city".

Photo Credit : Mark Beauregard       Arviat, NU               (license; no edits)

The land faces below freezing average temperatures for at least 8 months of the year.  Most of the municipalities experience a mild form of summer from mid-Jun to mid-September, with monthly average high temperatures just hovering between 10°C - 20°C and mostly below 15°C.  On the other hand, the monthly average low is just hovering around 4°C - 7°C for the months of July and August, while it is 0°C - 3°C for the months of June and September.  

From a tropical country perspective, it is at least cold the whole year round.  So are these places within the radar of the worldwide dispersion of fellow countrymen? The answer was actually a suprise yes for me, the first time I knew about it.  So there are Filipinos out there enduring the mostly tundra climate together with the indigenous inhabitants.  They are mostly found in Iqaluit in which they account for around 1% of the city's population.

Photo Credit: Northern Pix           Baker Lake, NU          (license; no edits)

So, what do we have in store at Nunavut? Well, if you love wilderness in its pristine form, then you have more than a million of square kilometers of untouched land by any human alteration.  The area contains numerous admirable little plants, which endured the extreme cold and desert-like condition due to low precipitation.  It is actually amazing that Nunavut has around 200 species of plants with extraordinary ability of adaptation.  Other than that, thick layers of mosses (considered as flowerless plants) and lichens (well, these are not plants) cover the soil above the permafrost, which allow taller plants to grow. 

Photo Credit : Alan Sim         Cambridge Bay, NU         (license; no edits)

How do these plants survive? Well, apart from genetics - which helped them survive the mostly acidic soil, very low nitrogen content, and of course, the extreme climate - the plants have actually a unique behavior of crowding together to form microclimates that allow photosynthesis to take place.  To name a few, Nunavut has Arctic cotton, Arctic willow (a tree in a tundra region?!), Labrador tea, blueberry, and cranberry.

How about the animals? To name a few, we have the polar bear, seal, walrus, muskox, and we shouldn't forget Santa's animal of mobility, but bigger version than what we saw in the usual renditions: the caribou.  If we include the caribou in the census, then Nunavut can come up with a figure close to 1 million inhabitants, and surely, the film "The Polar Express" isn't exaggerating anything when it comes to their number.

Photo Credit : Derrick Midwinter                    Arctic Cotton                     (license; no edits)

Photo Credit : Amanda Graham                  Arctic Willow                         (license; no edits)

Photo Credit : Derrick Midwinter                   Caribou                             (license; no edits)

Looking for something extraordinary?  Then, look further and seriously north, to Nunavut; and hunt for the Northern Lights as well.  However, the world needs to take care of these lands because when a permafrost melts, it looks extraordinarily disastrous as well.

Photo Credit : UBC Micrometeorology (license; no edits) -- Permafrost Melting

cold stuff for the warmer days of the year

Photo Credit : Olof Sundström & Martin Letzter    License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

Puncak Jaya

In February of this year, the Philippines experienced near record-low temperatures that the country has experienced in many years.  With the benchmark city being Baguio, the city's temperature dropped just one degree higher than its coldest morning ever, recorded on January 18, 1961 (6.3°C).  At 7.3°C on Feb. 15, 2017, it is the fourth coldest in the city's history [1].

In some areas, certain locals have even erroneously reported a below zero air temperature. One notable news is the one from Atok, Benguet, which was said to have registered -2°C. However, this was officially debunked by the weather bureau [2].

(Yeah, I understand the explanation too; you don't have to tell me..  They are talking about atmospheric temperature and not some soil or any plant surface temperature. And double yeah, frost on the ground can even form if the air temperature is above 0°C, and the range can be as high as 5°C so that you can see icy surfaces even if it is 5°C or 42°F. [3])

I think these types of news pop up every year, and for a generally hot and humid country, that's understandable.  There are times when we want some extraordinary news, and of course, some literally cool area to visit.  And think about snow too.  Snow in a tropical country would be really something extraordinary.

The thing is that there's something in our neighboring tropical country that certain cold-weather loving Filipinos will be envious of.  Well, it's not a well-known fact that there's *snow* (?!) in Indonesia, and an even "worse" fact is that there's *glacier* (?!!) in Indonesia as well.  (Huh, let me clarify something.  Indonesia is sliced by the equator, and then there's this so-called global warming.  Philippines is above Indonesia, and above the Philippines is Taiwan.  Taiwan is more acceptable, but Indonesia, I don't think so.)

Another neighboring country with snow is of course Taiwan, which is a more well-known fact.  So, certain freezer loving Filipinos are getting more convinced that this little country between Taiwan and Indonesia is so unlucky.  Ouch.  Well, let's just imagine that Mount Pulag did have that much coveted snow centuries ago, and we are quite sure of this given Indonesia's story.  Indonesia does have snow in their tallest mountain; in fact, not just snow, but tropical glacier as well.  This glacier story is relevant to the point that the world climate is undergoing some change; and let's face it, the world is getting at least a bit warmer.

Photo Credit : Olof Sundström & Martin Letzte 
Puncak Jaya / Carstensz Pyramid Snow Peak
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

Puncak Jaya.  Have you heard about this mountain before? The Philippines has Mount Apo, while Indonesia has Puncak Jaya a.k.a. Carstensz Pyramid.  Sorry guys; it's not a very accurate analogy because there is *snow* and *glacier* in Puncak Jaya. (Yeah, right; but let me tell you as well that the great *Philippine eagle* resides in Mount Apo; while in Carstensz Pyramid, they only have pharaohs, right?)

Rising at 4,884 m (16,023 ft.) above sea level in the island of New Guinea, no doubt that its peak will catch cold and cough up some snow.  Think about Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, and of course, the tropical portion of the Andes mountain range in South America.  In terms of glaciers, the Tropical Andes accounts for more than 99% share of the world's tropical glacier [4].  (Not really share, isn't it?) At least somebody threw some minuscule portions to East Africa and the Papua province of Indonesia. (But no one shared something to any part of the Philippines, and that's not very generous.)

In Puncak Jaya, that minuscule share has shrunk dramatically within just one century.  And it is very telling in NASA images, comparing 1989 and 2009 glaciated area, how the glaciers have shrunk rapidly within a 20-year period.  If the rate is the same, within the next 20 years, e.g. by 2029, it is estimated that all glaciers in Puncak Jaya will be gone [5].  Now, we shouldn't be really envious; we should rather sympathize for that projected loss. (And then lament, for the growing impossibility that there will be a "share-a-glacier" event in the Philippines.)

Photo Credit : NASA
Puncak Jaya Glaciers - 1989

Photo Credit : NASA

Puncak Jaya Glaciers - 2009

So how's tourism going on in Carstensz Pyramid? Well, there are mountain climbers the whole year round, but then there are only few days of good weather and it usually rains (or *snows* at its peak) for several hours during the day.  (That's not really a hospitable mountain, isn't it?) In some portions of the mountain, air temperature can rise rapidly during the day, e.g. from 12°C to 37°C, and night time temperature at the Base Camp (at 4,300 m above sea level) can fall to as low as – not just -2°C nor -4°C as some highly probable erroneous news from Northern Luzon in the Philippines claimed during the cooler times of the year – but rather a relatively very cold -8°C air temperature for a tropical country [6].

So how about the peak?  At 4,884 m above sea level, the temperature can plunge to as low as below -10°C [7], which is already considered cold even at a country that has frigid winters with temperatures falling below -20°C.  Those climate data exceed expectations for a tropical country like Indonesia, and even the Dutch explorer Jan Carstenszoon in 1623 was ridiculed in Europe for claiming that he spotted snow in a tropical country near the equator.

(So, there are still lots of instances that the temperature in that mountain is below 0°C then, so why do those so-called glaciers still disappear?  I've read somewhere that the factor is not just temperature, but it also includes other factors such as humidity as well.  So it's not really climate change, buster, it's just that those stupid glaciers are simply overreacting.)

[1] http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2017/02/15/Baguio-2017-coldest-day-new-record.html
[2] http://www.rappler.com/science-nature/earth-space/161800-negative-temperature-atok-benguet-debunked-pagasa
[3] https://www.weather.gov/arx/why_frost
[4] G. Kaser, "A review of the modern fluctuations of tropical glaciers" (1999)
[5] "Ice Loss on Puncak Jaya : Image of the Day - NASA Earth Observatory".  https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=79084
[6] https://www.livescience.com/41314-carstensz-pyramid.html
[7] http://www.carstenszpapua.com/climate_and_weather.html