Ocean
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the five oceans. It lies around the North Pole and is covered by sea ice for much of the year.
Picture credit: Andreas Weith (CC BY-SA 4.0) · AWeith (CC BY-SA 4.0) · AWeith (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Arctic Ocean?
Continents on its shores: Europe, Asia, North America.
The story behind it
The Arctic Ocean sits on top of the world, with the North Pole in its middle. Europe, Asia and North America wrap around it. In winter almost all of it freezes over, and even in summer much of the sea stays covered with floating ice. But the ice is shrinking: over the last decades there has been less and less of it. Big rivers such as the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena and the Mackenzie pour fresh water into the ocean. Because of that, and because little water evaporates in the cold, it is the least salty of the five oceans. Polar bears are the top hunters here, and walruses and whales live in the icy water. Its deepest place is the Molloy Deep, a hollow in the sea floor between Greenland and the Norwegian islands of Svalbard.
Find it on the globe
Arctic Ocean is there as a name written across its water — tap the water and its card opens. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
Questions children ask
How big is the Arctic Ocean?
The Arctic Ocean covers about 14.1 million km². That makes it the smallest of the five oceans, and with an average depth of about 1 000 m it is also the shallowest.
Is the Arctic Ocean frozen?
Much of it is covered by sea ice all year round, and in winter almost all of it. But the sea ice has been getting smaller for many years.
How deep is the Arctic Ocean?
Its deepest point is the Molloy Deep in the Fram Strait, about 5 550 m deep. Older estimates gave a little more, but careful measurements in 2019 found about 5 550 m.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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