The smallest representative of the earth's oceans is the Arctic Ocean. It covered the territory of the North Pole and borders on different sides of the continents. The average depth of the Arctic Ocean is 1225 meters. It is the shallowest ocean of all.
Position
The receptacle of cold waters and ice, which does not go beyond the Arctic Circle, washes the shores of the continents of the hemisphere and Greenland from the north. The average depth of the Arctic Ocean is quite small, but the waters in it are the coldest. Surface area - 14,750,000 square kilometers, volume - 18,070,000 cubic kilometers. The average depth of the Arctic Ocean in meters is 1225, while the deepest point is 5527 meters below the surface. This point belongs to the Greenland Sea basin.
Bottom relief
About what is the average and greatest depth of the NorthernThe Arctic Ocean, scientists have known for a long time, but almost nothing was known about the bottom topography until the war of 1939-1945. Over the past decades, a lot of diverse information has been collected thanks to expeditions on submarines and icebreakers. In the structure of the bottom, a central basin is distinguished, around which marginal seas are located.
Almost half of the ocean area is occupied by the shelf. In Russian territory, it stretched up to 1300 km from the ground. Near the European coasts, the shelf is much deeper and strongly indented. There are suggestions that this happened under the influence of the Pleistocene glaciers. The center is an oval basin of the greatest depth, which is divided by the Lomonosov Ridge, discovered and partially studied in the postwar years. Between the Eurasian shelf and the specified ridge there is a basin, the depth of which is from 4 to 6 km. On the other side of the ridge there is a second basin, the depth of which is 3400 m.
The Arctic Ocean is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Bering Strait, the border with the Atlantic runs through the Norwegian Sea. The structure of the bottom is due to the wide development of the shelf and underwater continental area. This explains the extremely low average depth of the Arctic Ocean - more than 40% of the total area is not deeper than 200 m. The rest is occupied by the shelf.
Natural conditions
The climate of the ocean is determined by its position. The severity of the climate is aggravated by a huge amount of ice - in the central part of the basin there is a thick layernever melts.
Cyclones develop over the Arctic all year round. The anticyclone is active mainly in winter, while in summer it moves to the junction with the Pacific Ocean. Cyclones rage in the territory in the summer. Due to such changes, the course of atmospheric pressure is clearly expressed over the polar ice. Winter lasts from November to April, summer - from June to August. In addition to cyclones originating over the ocean, cyclones that come from outside often walk here.
The wind regime at the Pole is not uniform, but speeds above 15 m/s are almost never encountered. Winds over the Arctic Ocean mainly have a speed of 3-7 m/s. The average temperature in winter is from +4 to -40, in summer - from 0 to +10 degrees Celsius.
Low clouds have a certain periodicity throughout the year. In summer, the probability of the appearance of low clouds reaches 90-95%, in winter - 40-50%. Clear skies are more characteristic of the cold season. Fogs are frequent in summer, sometimes they do not rise for up to a week.
Precipitation typical for this area is snow. Rains almost never happen, and if they do, then more often along with snow. Annually in the Arctic basin falls 80-250 mm, in the region of northern Europe - a little more. The thickness of the snow is small, unevenly distributed. During the warmer months, the snow actively melts, sometimes disappearing completely.
In the central region, the climate is milder than on the outskirts (near the coast of the Asian part of Eurasia and North America). The warm currents of the Atlantic penetrate into the water area, which form the atmosphere over the entire ocean area.
Flora and fauna
The average depth of the Arctic Ocean is sufficient for the appearance of a large number of different organisms in its thickness. In the Atlantic part, you can find a varied number of fish, such as cod, sea bass, herring, haddock, pollock. Whales live in the ocean, mainly bowhead and striped whales.
There are no trees in most of the Arctic, although spruce, pine and even birch grow in northern Russia and the Scandinavian Peninsula. The vegetation of the tundra is represented by cereals, lichens, several varieties of birch, sedge, and dwarf willows. The summer is short, but in winter there is a huge flow of solar radiation, which stimulates the active growth and development of the flora. The soil can warm up to 20 degrees in the upper layers, raising the temperature of the lower air layers.
A feature of the fauna of the Arctic is the limited number of species with an abundance of representatives of each of them. The Arctic is home to polar bears, arctic foxes, snowy owls, hares, crows, tundra partridges and lemmings. Herds of walruses, narwhals, seals and beluga whales are splashing in the seas.
Not only the average and maximum depth of the Arctic Ocean determines the number of animals and plants, the density and abundance of species inhabiting the territory decreases towards the center of the ocean.
