At the North Pole every compass direction points south
The Geographic North Pole is where Earth's rotation axis meets the surface, at latitude 90°N. All longitudes converge there, so its longitude is arbitrary. No time zone applies. Unlike the South Pole on Antarctica, it sits amid shifting Arctic sea ice, making permanent bases impossible.
The North Pole, also called the Geographic or Terrestrial North Pole, is the northern point where Earth's axis of rotation intersects the surface. It defines 90°N latitude and true north. At the pole every horizontal direction points south; all meridians meet. No time zone is assigned, so any time may serve as local time.
The nearest land is usually Kaffeklubben Island off Greenland, about 700 km away. Alert on Ellesmere Island, Canada, lies 817 km distant—the closest permanent settlement. The pole rests in the Arctic Ocean atop sea ice shifting constantly. Depths measured 4,261 m by the Russian Mir submersible in 2007 and 4,087 m by USS Nautilus in 1958.
Polar exploration produced disputed claims. Frederick Cook (1908) and Robert Peary (1909) asserted land arrivals later questioned. Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett's flight of 9 May 1926, endorsed at the time by a National Geographic committee, has since been doubted. Roald Amundsen's airship Norge overflew the pole on 12 May 1926 with sixteen aboard—the first verified attainment.
A 24-man Soviet party in 1948 made the first verified foot arrival after flying near the pole. Ralph Plaisted's 1968 snowmobile expedition completed the first land crossing with air support. Leonhard Euler predicted the axis might wobble; the Chandler wobble has a period of about 435 days, moving the instantaneous pole by metres. Soviet drifting station North Pole-1, established in May 1937, drifted 2,850 km to Greenland's east coast by February 1938. Earlier attempts fell short in memorable ways: William Parry reached 82°45′ North in 1827, Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen skied to 86°14′ in 1895 after leaving the icebound Fram, and Salomon Andrée's hydrogen balloon Örnen came down on the ice in 1897, some 300 km north of Svalbard's Kvitøya.
Source: North Pole
