Average depth of the Arctic Ocean, bottom relief and climate

The smallest representative of the terrestrial oceans is the Arctic Ocean. It covered the territory of the North Pole and is bordered on different sides by continents. The average depth of the Arctic Ocean is 1225 meters. He is the shallowest ocean of all.

Position

The container of cold waters and ice that does not go beyond the northern polar circle ishes the shores of the continents of the hemisphere and Greenland from the north. The average depth of the Arctic Ocean is rather small, but the water in it is the coldest. The surface area is 14,750,000 square kilometers, the volume is 18,070,000 cubic kilometers. The average depth of the Arctic Ocean in meters is 1225, while the deepest point is located at 5527 meters below the surface. This point belongs to the basin of the Greenland Sea.

Bottom relief

About what the average and greatest depth of the Arctic Ocean, scientists learned a long time, but that's about the relief of the bottom until the war in 1939-1945, almost nothing was known. Over the past decades, a lot of information has been collected through expeditions on submarines and icebreakers. In the structure of the bottom, a central basin is distinguished, around which the marginal seas are located.

Almost half of the ocean area is occupied by the shelf. In the Russian territory, it stretched to 1,300 km from the earth. Near the European shores the shelf is much deeper and heavily cut. There are suggestions that this happened under the influence of Pleistocene glaciers. The center is an oval basin of the greatest depth, which is divided by the Lomonosov Ridge, which was discovered and partially studied in the postwar years. Between the Eurasian shelf and this ridge is a hollow, the depth of which is from 4 to 6 km. On the other side of the ridge is the second hollow, whose depth is 3400 m.

With the Pacific Ocean the Arctic is connected by the Bering Strait, the border with the Atlantic lies through the Norwegian Sea. The structure of the bottom is due to the extensive development of the shelf and submarine 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 exacerbated by the huge amount of ice - in the central part of the basin the thick layer does not melt ever.

Year-round cyclones develop over the Arctic. The anticyclone is active mainly in the winter, whereas in the summer it moves to the place of connection with the Pacific Ocean. Cyclones are rampant in the territory in the summer. Due to such changes, the course of atmospheric pressure is clearly expressed over polar ice. Winter lasts from November to April, summer - from June to August. In addition to cyclones that originated over the ocean, cyclones that come from outside often walk here.

The wind regime at the pole is non-uniform, but the speed above 15 m / s practically does not occur. The winds above the Arctic Ocean predominantly 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 cloudiness has a certain periodicity during the year. In summer, the probability of low clouds is 90-95%, in winter - 40-50%. The clear sky is more characteristic for the cold season. In the summer fogs are frequent, sometimes they do not rise up to a week.

Precipitation, characteristic for this area, is snow. Rains practically do not happen, but if they do, more often with snow. Annually in the Arctic basin falls 80-250 mm, in the region of the north of Europe - a little more. The thickness of the snow is small, distributed unevenly. In warmer months, snow melts actively, sometimes it disappears completely.

In the central region, the climate is milder than on the outskirts (near the shores of the Asian part of Eurasia and North America). Into the water penetrate warm currents of the Atlantic, which form an atmosphere over the entire water area of the ocean.

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 area, a variety of fish can be found, such as cod, sea bass, herring, haddock, and saithe. In the ocean live whales, mostly greenland and striped.

In most of the Arctic there are no trees, although in the north of Russia and the Scandinavian peninsula, spruce, pine and even birch grow. The vegetation of the tundra is represented by cereals, lichens, several species of birches, sedge, and pygmy willows. The summer is short, but in winter a huge stream of solar radiation comes in, stimulating active growth and development of the flora. The soil can be heated in the upper layers to 20 degrees, increasing the temperature of the low layers of air.

The peculiarity of the fauna of the Arctic is the limited species with an abundance of representatives of each of them. The Arctic is home to polar bears, arctic foxes, white owls, hares, crows, tundra grouses and lemmings. Flocks of walruses, narwhals, seals and beluga flutter in the seas.

Not only the average and maximum depth of the Arctic Ocean determines the number of animals and plants, towards the center of the ocean, the density and abundance of species inhabiting the territory decreases.