26 articles
Arctic Archipelago
The Arctic Archipelago, also known as the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, is a group of roughly 36,500 islands off northern Canada containing Baffin Island and the Northwest Passage.
Arctic bays and inlets
Arctic bays and inlets are the coastal indentations of the Arctic Ocean, including shallow estuarine gulfs like the Ob Gulf, Yenisey Gulf, and Kolyma Gulf.
Arctic convoys of World War II
The Arctic convoys of World War II, also called the Murmansk Run, carried Lend-Lease supplies from Britain and Iceland to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk between 1941 and 1945.
Baffin Bay
Baffin Bay, also called Baffin's Bay, is an Arctic marginal sea between Greenland and Baffin Island, about 1,130 km long and over 2,740 m deep, linking the Arctic Ocean to Davis Strait; ice-covered most of the year with rapid sea-ice decline.
Barents Sea
The Barents Sea, named for navigator Willem Barentsz, is a 1.6-million-km2 Arctic shelf sea north of Norway and Russia, averaging 230 m deep, warmed by Atlantic inflow, highly productive, and jointly fished and managed by Norway and Russia.
Battle of the Barents Sea
The Battle of the Barents Sea was a naval engagement on 31 December 1942 in which British escorts drove off a stronger German force, and all of convoy JW 51B reached Russia.
Beaufort Sea
Beaufort Sea, Arctic Ocean marginal sea off northern Alaska and Canada, east of Point Barrow; home of the Beaufort Gyre, declining summer sea ice, a Canada–US boundary dispute, and contested oil and gas resources.
Bering Sea
The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean bounded by Russia, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands, named for navigator Vitus Bering, who died there in 1741.
Chukchi Sea
Chukchi Sea: Arctic marginal sea between Alaska and Russia's Chukchi Peninsula, linked to the Pacific by Bering Strait; shallow 0–50 m shelf carrying ~0.8–1.1 Sv of Pacific water northward, ice-covered about eight months a year, and warming rapidly.
East Siberian Sea
East Siberian Sea (Восточно-Сибирское море), a shallow Arctic Ocean marginal sea between the New Siberian Islands and Wrangel Island; 913,000 km², mean depth 54 m, most ice-bound Russian Arctic sea, nearly 80% of world subsea permafrost.
Foxe Basin
Foxe Basin: shallow Arctic inland sea in Nunavut, Canada, north of Hudson Bay between Baffin Island and Melville Peninsula; ~207,500 km², first-year ice most of the year, named for Luke Foxe (1631).
Kara Sea
The Kara Sea is a shallow marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean between Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya, receiving about 45% of all river runoff to the Arctic.
Khatanga Gulf
Khatanga Gulf (Khatanga Bay, Хатангский залив) is a large tidal estuary of the Khatanga River in the southwestern Laptev Sea off the Taymyr Peninsula, Russia, known for intense tidal mixing, an unusually large river plume, ice cover October to July, and Rosneft's Khatangsky oil license area.
Laptev Sea
The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean off Siberia, between the Taymyr Peninsula and the New Siberian Islands, renamed in 1935 for the Laptev brothers.
Lincoln Sea
Lincoln Sea: Arctic Ocean marginal sea off northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island, head of Nares Strait. A Last Ice Area stronghold of thick multi-year ice, bifurcation of Canadian and Eurasian Basin outflow waters.
Natural resources of the Arctic
Natural resources of the Arctic: petroleum, minerals, and fisheries north of the Arctic Circle across eight countries. USGS estimates 90 billion barrels oil and 1,669 tcf gas, mostly offshore and Russian, largely undeveloped due to cost, climate, and regulation.
North Water Polynya
The North Water Polynya (Pikialasorsuaq, Sarvarjuaq) is the largest, most productive polynya in the Northern Hemisphere, an ~80,000 km² open-water area in northern Baffin Bay maintained by a Kane Basin ice arch, upwelling, and ice advection.
Ostrov Oleniy
Ostrov Oleniy (Остров Олений, "Deer Island") is the name of several separate islands in Russia, the largest lying in the southern Kara Sea off Siberia's Gyda Peninsula.
Parry Channel
Parry Channel is the deep east-west waterway of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the northern Northwest Passage route through M'Clure Strait, Viscount Melville Sound, Barrow Strait, and Lancaster Sound, named for explorer William Edward Parry.
Petroleum exploration in the Arctic
Petroleum exploration in the Arctic covers oil and gas exploration in Arctic Alaska, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, Greenland, and Norway, marked by large USGS resource estimates, Shell's failed Chukchi wells, shifting U.S. leasing policy, and severe oil-spill response limits.
Russian Arctic islands
Russian Arctic islands: Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, and Wrangel Island, Arctic Ocean archipelagos totaling over 180,000 km², largely glaciated, depopulated, militarized, and partly protected as national park and UNESCO reserve.
Severnaya Zemlya (Северная Земля)
Severnaya Zemlya (Северная Земля, "Northern Land"), originally Nicholas II Land, is a Russian Arctic archipelago of about 36,800 km² between the Kara and Laptev seas, discovered in 1913 and mapped by the 1930–32 Ushakov–Urvantsev expedition.
Shtokman field (Штокмановское месторождение)
Shtokman field (Штокмановское месторождение), a giant Barents Sea gas condensate field 600 km from Murmansk with 3.9 tcm of gas; Gazprom-Total-Statoil consortium suspended development in 2012 over $30 billion costs and US shale gas.
Siberian Shelf
The Siberian Shelf comprises the Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian seas, the world's widest, shallowest continental shelf (20–30 m average depth), dominated by Siberian river freshwater, relic subsea permafrost, and rapid sea-ice retreat.
Storfjorden
Storfjorden (Svalbard), also called Wybe Jansz Water, is a large sea area between Spitsbergen and Edgeøya, Barentsøya, and Tusenøyane; a polynya producing dense brine-enriched bottom water, site of Norway's largest recorded earthquake (6.2, 2008).
White Sea (Белое море)
The White Sea (Белое море) is a semi-landlocked Russian Arctic sea connected to the Barents Sea, with seasonal ice, low salinity from river discharge, dominant tides, and the historic port of Arkhangelsk.