Alert: The Most Northern Settlement in The World

Located just over eight hundred kilometers away from the North Pole, the community of Alert, on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island, in Nunavut, Canada, is the most northerly permanent settlement in the world. The nearest populated place is another 540 kilometers south, in Greenland, while the nearest Canadian city is over two thousand kilometers away. The place is so close to the North Pole that it can’t connect with communication satellites because their orbit lies below the horizon. For four months, Alert exist in total darkness. For another four months, the sun never leaves the sky, but rising no more than 30 degrees above the horizon at noon. The land remains frozen and snow covered for almost ten months of the year. Winters are harsh and cold with temperatures regularly dropping thirty degrees below zero. Peak summer temperatures are just a couple of degrees above freezing. Photo credit: Johannes Zielcke/Flickr At any time in this godforsaken place, you’ll find several dozen people living. Thankfully, Alert is not their permanent home; they are merely here on work. These cold and miserable people, nicknamed “The Frozen Chosen", include members of the Canadian Armed Forces —which maintains a signals intelligence intercept facility called CFS Alert— and scientific personnel working at the two research facilities here —the Environment Canada weather station and a Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) atmosphere monitoring observatory. Update : In July 2019, during a global heat wave Alert recorded the highest ever temperature—an unprecedented 21 degrees Celsius, about 14 degrees higher than normal. The community of Alert is named after HMS Alert , a British ship which set up camp near Alert in the winters of 1875–76. The ship's captain, George Nares, and his crew were the first recorded people to reach the northern end of Ellesmere Island. The weather station was established here in 1950.