Arctic Ocean

The Arctic Ocean is the smallest of the world's five oceans (after the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and the recently delimited Southern Ocean). The Northwest Passage (US and Canada) and Northern Sea Route (Norway and Russia) are two important seasonal waterways. A sparse network of air, ocean, river, and land routes circumscribes the Arctic Ocean.

• polar climate characterized by 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

• 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 icepack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses;
• 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 Lomonosov Ridge)

• ice islands occasionally break away from northern Ellesmere Island;
• icebergs calved from glaciers in western Greenland and extreme northeastern Canada;
• permafrost in islands;
• virtually ice locked from October to June;
• ships subject to superstructure icing from October to May

• endangered marine species include walruses and whales;
• fragile ecosystem slow to change and slow to recover from disruptions or damage;
• thinning polar icepack

• major chokepoint is the southern Chukchi Sea (northern access to the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait);
• 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;
• maximum snow cover in March or April about 20 to 50 centimeters over the frozen ocean;
• snow cover lasts about 10 months

• some maritime disputes (see littoral states);
• Russia is the first state to submit data to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to extend its continental shelf by claiming two undersea ridges in the Arctic Ocean