50 Fun Facts About Arctic Ocean

How does the Arctic rank among the world's five oceans by size?

It is also the shallowest and coldest, covering about 14 million square kilometres, roughly the size of Antarctica.

The Arctic Ocean is the only ocean smaller than which country?

Russia's land area of 17.1 million square kilometres beats the ocean's 14.06 million.

Some oceanographers liken the Arctic Ocean to which enclosed sea, calling it the 'Arctic ___ Sea'?

It has also been described as roughly equivalent to an estuary of the Atlantic.

Which ocean has the lowest average salinity of the five?

Low evaporation, heavy river inflow and limited exchange with saltier oceans keep it fresh.

The Arctic Ocean connects to the Pacific through which passage?

On the Atlantic side its border is the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.

What is the average depth of the Arctic Ocean?

The Atlantic averages about 3,646 m and the Pacific about 4,000 m by comparison.

The deepest point in the Arctic Ocean, Molloy Hole, lies in which passage?

It reaches about 5,550 metres; the same strait between Greenland and Svalbard is where most Arctic water flows out.

Which underwater mountain chain divides the deep Arctic basin into the Eurasian and Amerasian basins?

Drilling suggests it is a sliver of continental crust that split from the Barents-Kara Shelf and may hold 10 billion barrels of oil.

The Siberian Shelf holds what world record among features of its kind?

It is one of three Russian shelves, along with the Barents and Chukchi shelves, and holds big oil and gas reserves.

The large circular current in the Canadian side of the Arctic is called what?

Strong winds from the Beaufort High drive it clockwise, and it is unusually fresh thanks to Canadian and Siberian rivers.

The Arctic's surface water stays close to what temperature year-round?

That is essentially the freezing point of seawater.

Arctic sea ice reaches its maximum extent in which month?

The minimum comes in September, and the swing between the two is about 7 million square kilometres.

September 2012's record-low Arctic ice was down what share from the 1979-2000 average?

The mean winter extent has been declining at about 12.85% per decade since 1980.

Research suggests the Arctic could be ice-free in summer for the first time in human history by which year?

Less ice lowers Earth's albedo, which drives further warming in a feedback loop.

The Arctic region is warming how much faster than the rest of the planet?

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago it was warm enough for tropical plankton.

Which four great rivers feed the fresh, low-salinity top layer of the Arctic Ocean?

Their water floats on the saltier, denser water below, separated by a halocline.

Water leaves the Arctic through which strait between Greenland and Svalbard?

It is about 2,700 metres deep and 350 km wide, which lets water flow in and out at once.

Which Greek explorer sailed north in 325 BC and described a 'congealed' sea near a land he called Thule?

He was probably describing loose sea ice, and his Thule was probably Norway.

Which persistent 19th-century myth held that warm, ice-free water surrounded the North Pole?

British Admiralty secretary John Barrow promoted expeditions in search of it from 1818 to 1845; it was disproven by the early 1900s.

Who made the first nautical crossing of the Arctic Ocean, from 1893 to 1896?

His plan was to freeze the ship Fram into the ice and let it drift across the top of the world.

Nansen's ship Fram was designed with a rounded hull so that the ice would do what?

Shipwright Colin Archer built it with an outer layer of greenheart wood and almost no keel.

Which submarine made the first transit under the North Pole in 1958?

The first surface ship to reach the Pole was the Soviet icebreaker Arktika in 1977.

Who led the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, by dog sled from Alaska to Svalbard in 1969?

Two decades later he examined Robert Peary's records and found serious discrepancies in his 1909 Pole claim.

The first undisputed expedition to reach the North Pole did so in 1926 aboard what?

The Norge overflew the Pole with 16 men, including Roald Amundsen; the earlier claims of Cook, Peary and Byrd are all disputed.

Robert Peary claimed to reach the North Pole on 6 April 1909 accompanied by four Inuit men and whom?

Henson's account of tortuous detours contradicts Peary's story of a straight-line dash, one reason the claim is disputed.

Which explorer completed the first passage of the Northwest Passage entirely by ship, in 1903-1906?

He sailed the small sloop Gjøa from Greenland to Alaska along a southerly route John Rae had found in 1854.

In which year did Sir John Franklin's two-ship Northwest Passage expedition vanish?

Franklin died in 1847 and Captain Francis Crozier took command; searches for the ships mapped much of the Canadian Arctic.

Which airline flew the first commercial flights over the Arctic Ocean in 1954, LA to Copenhagen?

The polar route cut hours off the trip between the US West Coast and Europe.

From 1937, which country began monitoring the Arctic from manned stations on drifting ice floes?

The scientific settlements were carried thousands of kilometres by the ice; Russia continued the drifting-station programme after the Soviet era.

In which year was the ghost ship Baychimo abandoned, before drifting the Arctic for decades?

The Hudson's Bay Company fur trader was last sighted in 1969.

The polar bear is the largest living species of what?

Adult males weigh 300 to 800 kg, and the bears count as marine mammals because they depend on the sea ice.

A mass invasion of polar bears forced a state of emergency on which Russian archipelago in 2019?

Shrinking sea ice pushed dozens of bears into homes and public buildings; the islands were also a Cold War nuclear test site.

The narwhal's spiral tusk is actually what?

It is a protruding left canine up to 3 metres long, thought to serve as a weapon, a feeding tool or a salinity sensor.

In ice-covered parts of the central Arctic, which fish is the central predator of tiny zooplankton?

It links copepods and amphipods to the seals, whales and polar bears at the top of the food web.

Which jellyfish is abundant in Arctic waters?

The banded gunnel is the only gunnel species living in the ocean.

The Arctic seabed may hold what share of the world's undiscovered oil and gas?

That is why the US, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark are all pressing territorial claims near the centre of the sea.

In 2015, five Arctic nations agreed to keep fishing vessels out of a zone of what size around the North Pole?

The moratorium holds until scientists know more about the fish stocks and rules exist to protect them.

How many countries make up the Arctic Council?

Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States all hold territory inside the Arctic Circle.

Svalbard's largest settlement, on the island of Spitsbergen, is called what?

The 1920 Svalbard Treaty gave Norway sovereignty but made the archipelago a free economic zone with limits on military use.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault sits how far inside a sandstone mountain?

It opened in February 2008; the surrounding permafrost keeps the seeds cold even if the power fails.

Greenland, the world's largest island, is an autonomous territory of which kingdom?

Its capital is Nuuk, and Greenlanders are Danish citizens.

The Northern Sea Route along Siberia begins at the Kara Sea and ends at which passage in the east?

The 5,600 km route crosses the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi seas and lies entirely within one country's exclusive economic zone.

Which country's northernmost city, Murmansk, is a major Arctic port on the Barents Sea?

Other Russian Arctic ports include Arkhangelsk on the White Sea and Tiksi on the Laptev Sea.

The Thule people, ancestors of the modern Inuit, spread east across the Arctic from which region?

Their tradition arose around the Bering Strait about 200 BC and replaced the earlier Dorset culture.

The Arctic Ocean extends south from the North Pole to roughly which line of latitude?

Its borders follow topography: the Bering Strait on the Pacific side and the Greenland-Scotland Ridge on the Atlantic side.

At about 14 million square kilometres, the Arctic Ocean is almost the size of which continent?

Its roughly circular basin is also the only ocean smaller than a single country, Russia.

The Arctic Ocean is virtually icelocked from October until which month?

Even in the open season, icebergs calved from western Greenland and northern Ellesmere Island can become embedded in the pack ice.

Which icebreaker made the first surface ship transit to the North Pole in 1977?

Nineteen years after a submarine first passed beneath the pole, the Soviet nuclear icebreaker reached it on the surface.

Russian radioactive waste dump sites lie in which marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean?

Other contamination sources include Cold War tests on Novaya Zemlya and Camp Century's leftovers in Greenland.

Which deep sub-basin of the Arctic floor lies between the Lomonosov and Gakkel ridges?

The seafloor began spreading from the Gakkel Ridge in the Paleocene and Eocene, pushing the Lomonosov Ridge away from land.