by Chris Wayan, 2006
this page is still in progress
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INTRO
The north is harsh; let's proceed with caution. There is only one approach to the North Pole these days: the North Atlantic, around Iceland. The Bering Strait is a high pass, ice-free only in August most years, like all Alaska. It warms up again further north, for the Arctic Sea has receded and broken up into several salt lakes deep in their polar basins.
But before we push that far north, let's have a look at the lands around the hole in the top of the world. This North Atlantic/Siberia map shows the surrounding ice-caps.
It's arguable that these caps should merge into great icefields, as they do in our Ice Ages. I've kept them smaller and separate for a couple of reasons: ice normally builds up only until the top of the ice-dome is in thin air, about half the pressure at sea level; precipitation at that altitude is usually small and offset by the flow of the ice outward. On Siphonia's continental platforms, the air is much thinner; the limit is reached much sooner, so individual caps aren't under nearly as much pressure and don't spread as much. They grow mostly from precipitation not creep. But nearly all the precipitation is near the coasts, which have receded; inland Siberia and Lake Hudson may be cold enough to sustain icecaps, but a bit too dry to build big ones.
The North Atlantic valleys from Labrador to Britain are warmer yet: cool-temperate? These five valleys, Labrador, Irminger, Garar, Maury and Rockall, together form perhaps the largest region on Siphonia that's midway between the new sea level and the old. Judging purely by air pressure / virtual altitude, their climate should be much like France. It won't be, though; Greenland and the new secondary caps of Scandinavia, Iceland and the Faeroes will give it colder weather. The question is: England, or Norway?
I suspect England; the dense air in these valleys can carry a lot of moisture, further moderating the climate. Cool, misty, and damp is my guess. Trees will love it; people won't. At least the people we know. Perhaps, in a milllion years, something better-adapted will evolve. Brown arctic bears already have brains nearly as big as chimps'; might they be on the cusp of a brain-expansion like ours?
Or maybe the British will just go on cursing the weather and carrying umbrellas, in the streets of New London on the Maury or Rockall River, a thousand km west and over two km below the poor old Thames, where caribou wade (in the few months when it's not iced over). Either way, bears or barristers (or bears who are barristers, let's not be specist), these valleys will be an interesting land--mild, green and fertile, yet right below the ice. And not the only place of this sort: consider the new cooler India below the Tibetan icecap, or Amazonia below the great ice wall of the Andes! It's a juxtaposition inconceivable on Earth today--though twenty thousand years ago there were rich grassy steppes right up to the edges of the ice in many places.
Now you get the basic dynamics--at least as I understand them. To the right is a first-draft map of the polar basins. It doesn't entirely agree with the North Atlantic map; probably this one's closer to final.
The deep polar basins are another world. Their climate is contradictory: glaciation on the surrounding uplands is more extensive--two or three Greenlands, at least!--but the old seabasins are lower; their air is denser and warmer than our Arctic. The result depends on HOW much lower the arctic seas are. During the Big Slurp, much of the the polar sea drained out past Greenland into the lowering Atlantic, but that only lowered the polar sea a kilometer or so. However, polar climate is dry, so my best guess is that evaporation will slowly shrink the Arctic sea until it splits into a complex of seas and freshwater lakes much deeper in their basins.
At what level will they be stable? It's hard to know, and will vary according to precipitation and inflow from surrounding rivers. This may be pretty small at first, since the Big Slurp causes the air pressure to drop and the climate to grow colder. But over time, as the seas fall, the air will grow thicker again. If the water level drops enough, air pressure will rise past 1 atmosphere, and the denser air will trap heat.
The result is probably, on average, deep sea-basins with milder temperatures than our Arctic, surrounded by substantial ice-capped highlands. Both hotter and colder at once! The shallower basins will feel polar, even Antarctic; but the deepest basins will feel Scandinavian or Canadian, not Arctic--they may even have boreal forests. Trees at the Pole, for the first time in fifty million years!
The details are still in progress, as you can see from the tentative close-up map of the Arctic basins, below.
Note the strange rift valley forming a long isthmus between the Fram and Nansen Seas. It's called Nansen Ridge on most maps, but that's deceptive; it's no simple ridge. Twin ridges flank a valley so deep it'll be flooded most of its length. Indeed some of its low points are 5 km below our sea level, about the lowest points in the Arctic; they'll be deep water no matter how far Siphonia's seas subside. But a chain of freshwater lakes like our Lake Baikal, or one long narrow sea, or sounds flooded by the Fram or Nansen Seas? I don't know; possibly all of them in different stretches. On NOAA maps the region looks very rugged and confused, with side-holes and cones--volcanoes? It resembles East Africa's rift valleys, or Venus's chasmas, and both of those sport lots of associated vulcanism.
While our polar region is generally dry, these deep basins with their denser air and warmer temperatures will generate more rain. The Nansen Isthmus, surrounded by seas, will be the rainiest place in the north, and volcanic ash will build its soils. I expect rich boreal forests, berry-bogs, and meadows on the heights--a new Alaska. But this far north, the seasons will be strange indeed: half a year of perpetual light, half of darkness.
The Makarov Basin, also snuggled up against the North Pole, and more isolated behind the rugged Lomonosov Range, is probably deeper. The rivers feeding this basin are much smaller, proportionate to its size, than the seas around the Nansen Isthmus, fed by the huge Lena and Ob' Rivers. So the Makarov Sea may lie as much as three km below our Arctic. The dense air at this depth will keep the Makarov shores warmer on average than the Fram and Nansen basins, but more continental, with harsher winters--Siberian. Trees? I'm not sure. But I think so--right at the pole!
The last basin, and the largest, is shallower again, about 2.5 km deep; the mighty Mackenzie and Passage Rivers (the river draining the old Northwest Passage and much of former Nunavut) feed the Beaufort Sea and keep it from shrinking further. The land is like northern Alaska, with large trees only in sheltered spots along the southern coast (top of map; remember you've passed the pole now). Sweeping arctic meadows, braided silty rivers and craggy mountains--not heavily glaciated, for this basin too has strong temperature swings that tend to melt snowpacks by late summer, though only briefly. The rugged Northwind and Chukchi Valleys are spectacular, but time your trip carefully to avoid the bugs.
In late summer we climb south out of the Arctic Basin over Bering Pass and the Pacific Basin--more exactly the Bering Basin, a cool but solidly forested lowland north of the towering Aleutian Range. As you descend from the tundra's immense vistas into those claustrophobic forests, you don't care what the map says about your latitude--you've left the Arctic.
You crossed the pole--eating berries all the way.
I did warn you Siphonia was strange.
The following route snakes around Siphonia, covering most features (under construction)
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