The Arctic Ocean and Sea Ice Dynamics

The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceans, covering roughly 14 million square kilometers, an area encircled by North America, Greenland, Europe, and Asia. Its average depth is only about 1,205 meters, far less than the global ocean average of roughly 3,700 meters, and its deepest point, the Molloy Deep in the Fram Strait, reaches about 5,550 meters. The basin is bisected by the Lomonosov Ridge, a submarine mountain chain roughly 1,800 kilometers long that separates the Amerasian Basin from the Eurasian Basin and that Soviet aerial and submarine surveys first mapped in detail in 1948-49. Continental shelves make up close to half of the Arctic Ocean's total area, the largest proportion of shelf of any ocean, with the wide Siberian shelf alone extending over a thousand kilometers from the coast in places. The ocean connects to the Atlantic through the Fram Strait and the Barents Sea, and to the Pacific through the narrow, shallow Bering Strait, only about 85 kilometers wide and roughly 50 meters deep at its sill.