Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean as the 1992 edition of the CIA World Factbook published it: 14 fields, one of 36 editions from 1990 to 2025.
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Geography
10 fieldsLand area
14,056,000 km2; includes Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, and other tributary water bodies
Climate
- persistent cold and relatively narrow annual temperature ranges;
- winters characterized by continuous darkness, cold and stable weather conditions, and clear skies;
- summers characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones with rain or snow
Terrain
- central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that averages about 3 meters in thickness, although pressure ridges may be three times that size;
- clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland);
- the ice pack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling land masses;
- the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen Cordillera, and Lomonsov Ridge);
- maximum depth is 4,665 meters in the Fram Basin
Natural resources
sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, polymetallic nodules, oil and gas fields, fish, marine mammals (seals, whales)
Environment
- endangered marine species include walruses and whales;
- ice islands occasionally break away from northern Ellesmere Island;
- icebergs calved from glaciers in western Greenland and extreme northeastern Canada;
- maximum snow cover in March or April about 20 to 50 centimeters over the frozen ocean and lasts about 10 months;
- permafrost in islands;
- virtually icelocked from October to June;
- fragile ecosystem slow to change and slow to recover from disruptions or damage
Note
- major chokepoint is the southern Chukchi Sea (northern access to the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait);
- ships subject to superstructure icing from October to May;
- strategic location between North America and Russia;
- shortest marine link between the extremes of eastern and western Russia, floating research stations operated by the US and Russia
Economy
Economic activity is limited to the exploitation of natural resources, | including crude oil, natural gas, fish, and seals.
1 fieldOverview
Economic activity is limited to the exploitation of natural resources, including crude oil, natural gas, fish, and seals.
Communications
3 fieldsNote
sparse network of air, ocean, river, and land routes; the Northwest Passage (North America) and Northern Sea Route (Asia) are important seasonal waterways
Cite this entry
Central Intelligence Agency. “Arctic Ocean.” The World Factbook 1992. Archived by The Factbook, thefactbook.org/arctic-ocean/1992.