‘Wonderful Productions of The Frigid Zone’

In 1818 the British Admiralty launched an Arctic expedition. The immediate stimulus was recent reports from whalers of a significant decrease in polar ice, a condition interpreted by some natural philosophers as an indication of impending climate change. Such a warming would affect not only the Arctic but also the European climate, with profound consequences, possibly beneficial for British agriculture and commerce. These ideas were widespread but not uncontested. Polar ice appeared as a natural wonder that called for scientific attention, just as it appealed to the Romantic artists. This article investigates this British discourse at the threshold of modern climatology during the final phase of the Little Ice Age. It puts our current climate debates about the cryosphere, deep time and geoengineering into historical perspective.