The Arctic Ocean: Boundary Conditions and Background Information

A key to many scientific studies of ocean and sea floor processes is an accurate description of the sea floor morphology. For Arctic scientists this has posed a particular problem because less is known about the Arctic Ocean bathymetry and physiography than for the other oceans. For nearly 60 years after Nansen’s collection of deep bathymetric soundings during his epic expedition with the vessel Fram drifting in the Arctic pack ice from the New Siberian Islands to the Fram Strait (Nansen 1902), it was a common belief that the entire central Arctic Ocean consisted of one deep basin. The perennial sea ice cover, within which Fram drifted, has severely hampered the systematic collection of bathymetric information from surface vessels. Following World War II the former Soviet Union started a sparse, but systematic, collection of bathymetric soundings in the central Arctic from ice stations established at great risk using airplanes to land scientists on the pack ice in order to carry out soundings through the ice.