Arctic to subarctic, generally, in less than , and often over a much shorter distance. History of Arctic climate observation Due to the lack of major population centres in the Arctic, weather and climate observations from the region tend to be widely spaced and of short duration compared to the midlatitudes and tropics. Though the Vikings explored parts of the Arctic over a millennium ago, and small numbers of people have been living along the Arctic coast for much longer, scientific knowledge about the region was slow to develop; the large islands of Severnaya Zemlya, just north of the Taymyr Peninsula on the Russian mainland, were not discovered until 1913, and not mapped until the early 1930s Early European exploration Much of the historical exploration in the Arctic was motivated by the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century expeditions were largely driven by traders in search of these shortcuts between the Atlantic and the Pacific. These forays into the Arctic did not venture far from the North American and Eurasian coasts, and were unsuccessful at finding a navigable route through either passage. National and commercial expeditions continued to expand the detail on maps of the Arctic through the eighteenth century, but largely neglected other scientific observations. Expeditions from the 1760s to the middle of the 19th century were also led astray by attempts to sail north because of the belief by many at the time that the ocean surrounding the North Pole was ice-free. These early explorations did provide a sense of the sea ice conditions in the Arctic and occasionally some other climate-related information. By the early 19th century some expeditions were making a point of collecting more detailed meteorological, oceanographic, and geomagnetic observations, but they remained sporadic. Beginning in the 1850s regular meteorological observations became more common in many countries, and the British navy implemented a system of detailed observation. As a result, expeditions from the second half of the nineteenth century began to provide a picture of the Arctic climate. Early European observing efforts The first major effort by Europeans to study the meteorology of the Arctic was the First International Polar Year (IPY) in 1882 to 1883. Eleven nations provided support to establish twelve observing stations around the Arctic. The observations were not as widespread or long-lasting as would be needed to describe the climate in detail, but they provided the first