Arctic Ocean Seafloor Features Map
Image: Wikipedia
The Arctic Ocean has played a minor role in world history. Ice cover severely hinders navigation; the area is remote; there is almost no infrastructure; winters are dark and very cold; summer days are short and foggy. These challenges make the Arctic Ocean a hostile and difficult area.
Arctic Ocean: History and Now
Today, we are at a time when interest in the Arctic Ocean is growing steadily. A warming climate is thinning and shrinking the polar ice pack to allow increased navigation. New oil and gas assessments have revealed an enormous energy resource. And, the Law of the Sea Treaty has motivated nations to clearly define their exclusive economic zone in the Arctic Ocean.
The new interest in the Arctic Ocean is not confined to its surface; it extends to the bottom where information about its structure is needed by geologists, oceanographers, biologists and other people who work there. The primary physical features of the Arctic Ocean seafloor are labeled on the bathymetry map above and described in the paragraphs below. Other maps on this page illustrate navigational, physical, and mineral resource features.
Arctic Ocean Geography
The Arctic Ocean has a surface area of about 14.056 million square kilometers (5.427 million square miles), making it the smallest of Earth’s five oceans. Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Straight, Kara Sea, and Laptev Sea are generally considered to be part of the Arctic Ocean. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait and connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the Labrador Sea and the Greenland Sea.
Lomonosov Ridge
The dominant topographic feature of the Arctic Ocean seafloor is the Lomonosov Ridge. This feature is thought to be part of the Eurasian continental crust that rifted from the Barents-Kara Sea margin and subsided in early Tertiary time (about 64 to 56 million years ago). The side of the Ridge facing Eurasia is bounded by half-graben faults, and the side facing North America is gently sloping.
The Lomonosov Ridge traverses the Arctic Ocean from the Lincoln Shelf (off Ellesmere Island and Greenland) to the New Siberian Islands off the coast of northern Russia. It divides the Arctic Ocean into two major basins: the Eurasian Basin on the Eurasian side of the ridge and the Amerasian Basin on the North American side. It rises over 3000 meters above the floors of these basins and at its highest point is about 954 meters below sea level. It was discovered by Russian scientists in 1948.
Amerasian and Eurasian Basins
The Lomonosov Ridge divides the floor of the Arctic Ocean into two major basins. The Eurasian Basin is on the Eurasian side of the Lomonosov Ridge, and the Amerasian Basin is on the North American side of the Lomonosov Ridge.
The Amerasian and Eurasian Basins have been subdivided by ridges. The Gakkel Ridge, a spreading center responsible for the rifting of the Lomonosov block from the Eurasian continent, divides the Eurasian Basin into the Fram Basin on the Lomonosov side of the ridge and the Nansen Basin on the Eurasian continent side. The Alpha Ridge divides the Amerasian Basin into the Canada Basin on the North American side of the ridge and the Makarov Basin on the Lomonosov side of the ridge.
Continental Shelves
The Amerasian Basin and the Eurasian Basin are surrounded by extensive continental shelves. These include the Chukchi Shelf and the Beaufort Shelf along North America; the Lincoln Shelf along northern Greenland; the Barents Shelf, Kara Shelf, Laptev Shelf, and East Siberian Shelf along Eurasia.
Enormous amounts of natural gas are believed to be beneath the Barents Shelf and the Kara Shelf as parts of the East Barents Petroleum Province and the West Siberian Petroleum Province. Oil and natural gas are believed to be beneath significant parts of the Chukchi Shelf, Beaufort Shelf, and Canada Basin as part of the Arctic Alaska Petroleum Province and the Amerasia Petroleum Province (see map).
Image: Geology.com and MapResources.
Rift Basins
Greenland is flanked by two rift basins: the East Greenland Rift Basin and the West Greenland Rift Basin. These basins connect the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. Each of these basins is thought to be underlain by a significant oil and natural gas resource.
Navigation Through the Arctic Ocean
Two potentially important navigation channels pass through the Arctic Ocean (see map). The Northwest Passage is a sea route that connects the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean across the northern coast of North America and through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The Northern Sea Route is a similar route that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean across the northern coast of the Eurasian Continent.
Both of these routes have been virtually impassable in the past because they are covered by thick, year-round sea ice. However, they have been relatively ice-free for a few weeks in recent years and have attracted a small amount of commercial shipping. Each of these routes cuts thousands of miles off of a trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Both routes face jurisdictional problems and questions over who has a right to use them and under what conditions.
See more here: geology.com
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Alan Webb
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summer days are short and foggy.
Umm. No. They’re actually pretty long.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Alan and PSI Readers,
Very good correction of a wrong statement! For I had missed it and I finally have discovered the opportunity to emphasize the importance of the spring equinox relative the Arctic polar atmosphere’s circulation.
But I need your help to correct me if I have the following all wrong. First, I absolutely know that the Arctic polar atmosphere has a volume much greater than the Antarctic polar atmosphere because of the presence of the Antarctica continent. Therefore, I have long considered that the suddenly warming of Arctic atmosphere must expand the very cold winter atmosphere and force a atmospheric flow toward the lower northern latitudes. And only this morning did I look at (https://fever.byrd.osu.edu/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-82.98,39.98,335.to) see how the near surface atmospheric temperature increased after spring equinox. For I know that the surface of the ice and never rise above zero C (32F) even at the summer solstice. (Now because I could not spell ‘solstice’ I discovered that meteorologists do not commonly use the seasonal words equinox and solstice.). And I know that during the daytime that the temperature of the atmosphere generally decreases with increasing altitude. Which I consider evidence that troposphere does not strong/y absorb (is warmed) by solar radiation.
But above the troposphere we know that the atmosphere of the stratosphere is warmed by solar radiation and above the stratosphere there is the mesosphere whose temperature again decreases with increasing altitude. I dare state than one must use the knowledge of the chemists to actually understand this known temperature structure of the atmosphere.
Suddenly, as I compose this comment, I become aware of the fact that a physical geographer, Arthur N. Strahler (Physical Geography 3rd Ed., 1969) is a good book to read to understand that which I was intending to briefly describe (an impossibility). So I have alerted you and PSI Readers where to go if they actually want to learn the basics of the Earth’s atmospheric system.
Have a good day, Jerry
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