Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska: US City dark for two months

The sun set on Utqiaġvik, Alaska for the final time this year in late November, as the Arctic Circle now experiences polar nights — a phenomenon in which night lasts for more than 24 hours.

An eerie time lapse from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, taken from a sea ice cam at Utqiaġvik, showed the strange experience of 24 hours without sun.

In the clip, the sky turned from pale to bright blue, before pitch blackness descended for several hours. The waves crashed against “landfast ice” — frozen seawater that is fastened to the coast in cold climates — on the shore of the coastal city while a scant few people and cars shuffled about.

That glimmer of pale blue light seen at the start of the clip is known as “civil twilight”, when the light from the sun is just barely visible but the sun itself has not risen above the horizon.

Utqiaġvik, which is the northernmost city in the US, will not experience another sunrise until about 1:09pm local time on January 23, 2024.

Even then, the sun will only be visible for about an hour.

After that date, daylight hours will steadily increase throughout spring until reaching “midnight sun” — the opposite of polar of polar night.

At that point, Utqiaġvik will see 24 hours of sunlight each day for several months.

The annual phenomenon occurs because of the position of Earth’s two poles relative to the sun. The Earth rotates on a slight tilt, meaning for half the year each pole is either completely exposed to or obscured from the sun.

The lack of sunlight also means chilly temperatures. On Wednesday, the temperature in Utqiaġvik is forecast to range from a low of -20C to a high of just -17C.

University of Alaska Fairbanks explained its Utqiaġvik sea ice cam helps to monitor not just immediate conditions but also longer term environmental changes.

“Apart from providing a visual impression of the sea-ice conditions off [Utqiaġvik], these images establish a longer term record of key dates in the seasonal evolution of the sea-ice cover, such as onset of fall ice formation, formation of a stable ice cover, onset of spring melt, appearance of melt ponds, beginning of ice break-up in early summer [and] removal or advection of sea ice during the summer months.”