Big R Radio Warm Hits - 101.6 Above this layer, warmer air is also sinking down, which forces the colder surface air to slip south. This shimmering air looks just like a heat haze, but it is the first wisps of the polar wind. This is what carries winter out of its Arctic lair. This icy blast accelerates the further south it travels. I'll follow the polar wind as it brings the wildest, most destructive weather into our world. This far north, east and west have little or no bearing. From here, all directions point south, which leaves me, as it does winter, only one way to go. Even a thousand miles south of the North Pole, cold still grips the planet. Even here, faced with the worst extremes of cold weather, people make their homes. This is one of the most northerly inhabited settlements on the planet - Ittoqqortoormitt in Greenland. It's home to one of the most hardy peoples on Earth, the Inuit. If they can survive out here, maybe they're different from me. Great to be here. Nice to meet you. The weather here is among the most extreme on the planet. In winter, temperatures can drop to minus . Children can only play outside for ten minutes before their skin freezes solid. Big R Radio Warm Hits - 101.6 But a lifetime's exposure can prepare you for the worst. How do you survive here? I've three pairs of gloves under here and mitts. My fingers are still cold. How can you keep so warm? When I was young and began to hunt I also freeze very much. I learned to use my hands, even when very cold. It's training. So the Inuit are no different from me. We're simply not designed for cold, because we evolved from the tropics, and even after thousands of years of Arctic weather, the Inuit have few physical adaptations to the cold. Inventiveness, not evolution, keeps us alive - clothing, shelter, heating. Only a madman would challenge the Arctic cold without protection. To see what it does to me, I've come to a controlled environment to find out what happens when the body is exposed to extreme cold. Not the best place to be in your underwear. According to cold expert Dr Frank Golden, most people can only stand this cold for half an hour. I'll be constantly monitored and, unlike the real Arctic, I can walk out of here any time. Good luck. Thank you very much. The temperature is minus , it's bloody freezing. Not the best place to be with no clothes on, but it's getting my temperature down quickly, for my body to react. Our bodies keep our vital organs at a stable degrees Celsius. It's called the core temperature. I'll have to work overtime to try and maintain it. He's not long in the cold but he's beginning to shiver. He's shivering to produce more heat, to counter the heat loss. His elbows are close to his side, his arms across his chest. He's trying to shut down the surface area from which heat is lost to the environment. The only way to try to keep warm is to move. He's not sure what to do with his body. He knows he can't generate enough heat by shivering, so he's not sure whether to exercise more to produce heat. His temperature is falling and there's nothing he can do. After just a short time, my body can't generate enough heat and my temperature is on the way down.