Here's why the South Pole froze over before the North Pole

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Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini/File Photo 03 Jul 2026 02:02AM (Updated: 03 Jul 2026 02:04AM) Bookmark Bookmark Share WhatsApp Telegram Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn Set CNA as your preferred source on Google Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. Read a summary of this article on FAST. Get bite-sized news via a newcards interface.

Give it a try. Click here to return to FAST Tap here to return to FAST FAST July 2 : While it once was temperate and lush, Earth's southernmost continent Antarctica froze over about 34 million years ago, covered by an ice sheet that today is up to around 3 miles (5 km) thick. By contrast, the planet's northernmost realm, the Arctic region, did not freeze over for another 25 million years.

This polar asymmetry long has puzzled scientists, but researchers now may have solved the mystery. They assessed the Antarctic region's topography and used computational models to reconstruct how the surface evolved over many millions of years. They found that a powerful geological process drove the renewed uplift of a mountain range in eastern Antarctica that eventually passed an elevation threshold crucial for letting mountain glaciers form and expand and for permanent ice to take hold.

The result was the appearance of the vast East Antarctic ice sheet at a time when global temperatures were around 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) warmer than today. That left the South Pole with an ice cap long before a long-term global cooling trend enabled an ice cap to become established around the North Pole. The East Antarctic ice sheet was in place by the start of a chapter in Earth's history called the Oligocene epoch, which followed the Eocene epoch.

CNA Games Guess Word Crack the word, one row at a time Buzzword Create words using the given letters Mini Sudoku Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser Mini Crossword Small grid, big challenge Word Search Spot as many words as you can Show More Show Less Antarctica once was part of a Southern Hemisphere supercontinent called Gondwana that also included landmasses that are now Africa, South America, Australia, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent. As part of a process called plate tectonics involving the inexorable movement of continent-scale plates on the planet's surface, these landmasses eventually separated and crept toward their current locations."Our study shows that an ancient geological process that started more than 160 million yea