Arctic Ocean
Množina: Arctic Oceans
Ice covered waters surrounding the North Pole; mostly covered with solid ice or with ice floes and icebergs.
Ocean surrounding the North Pole; area 14,000,000 sq km/5,400,000 sq mi. Because of the Siberian and North American rivers flowing into it, it has comparatively low salinity and freezes readily.
The ocean comprises:
Beaufort Sea off Canada/Alaska coast, named for British admiral Francis Beaufort; oil drilling allowed only in winter because the sea is the breeding and migration route of the bowhead whales, staple diet of the local Inuit people
Greenland Sea between Greenland and Svalbard
Norwegian Sea between Greenland and Norway.
From W to E along the north coast of Russia:
Barents Sea named for Willem Barents, which has oil and gas reserves and was strategically significant as the meeting point of the nato and Warsaw Pact forces. The White Sea is its southernmost gulf
Kara Sea renowned for bad weather and known as the great ice cellar
Laptev Sea between Taimyr Peninsula and New Siberian Island
East Siberian Sea and Chukchi Sea between Russia and the us; the seminomadic Chukchi people of ne Siberia finally accepted Soviet rule in the 1930s.
The Arctic Ocean has the world's greatest concentration of nuclear submarines, but at the same time there is much scientific cooperation on exploration, especially since Russia needs Western aid to develop oil and gas in its areas.
arctic · Arctic Archipelago · Arctic belt · arctic circle · arctic climate · Arctic explorations · arctic fox · Arctic Ocean