Category:North European Ice



The Earth is in a new ice age. Northwest Europe will still be battered by westerlies carrying a lot of water so there will be severe blizzards in the bitterly cold winter.

Ice sheets cover most of N America and all of Scandinavia, and reach down into Northern Europe. Huge icebergs float in the freezing ocean.

Because so much water is locked up in the icecaps, the sea level has fallen by 500ft (150m).

England and France are joined by a frozen plain of sand and gravel - the tundra.

Winter night-time temperatures are -60oC.

Meltwater gathers in the summer. There are cracked and broken rocks all around. Domes, called pingos, rise up where frozen water has pushed up the rocks.

The few plants are cottongrass, lichens and heather. Some hardy trees like willow grow low and gnarled. All these grow in shallow pockets of soil.

Flies gather around the pools, and are fed on by migrant birds, which spend the winters further south.