!!!Arctic Ocean: Geography
||Location|body of water between Europe, Asia, and North America, mostly north of the Arctic Circle
||Geographic Coordinates|90 00 N, 0 00 E[{GoogleMap location='90.0,0.0' zoom='4'}]
||Land boundaries|NA
||Coastline|45,389 km
||Elevation Extremes|''lowest point: ''Fram Basin -4,665 m\\''highest point: ''sea level 0 m
||Highest Mountains|
||Terrain|central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that, on average, is about 3 meters thick, although pressure ridges may be three times that thickness; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight-line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland); the icepack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen Cordillera, and Lomonosov Ridge)
||Natural Hazards|ice islands occasionally break away from northern Ellesmere Island; icebergs calved from glaciers in western Greenland and extreme northeastern Canada; permafrost in islands; virtually ice locked from October to June; ships subject to superstructure icing from October to May
||Natural Resource|sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, polymetallic nodules, oil and gas fields, fish, marine mammals (seals and whales)
||Land Use|NA
||Climate|polar climate characterized by persistent cold and relatively narrow annual temperature ranges; winters characterized by continuous darkness, cold and stable weather conditions, and clear skies; summers characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones with rain or snow
||Irrigated Land|NA
||Renewable Water Resources|NA
||Environment_CurrentIssues|endangered marine species include walruses and whales; fragile ecosystem slow to change and slow to recover from disruptions or damage; thinning polar icepack
||Environment - international agreements|NA
||Large Cities|
||Geography-note|major chokepoint is the southern Chukchi Sea (northern access to the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait); strategic location between North America and Russia; shortest marine link between the extremes of eastern and western Russia; floating research stations operated by the US and Russia; maximum snow cover in March or April about 20 to 50 centimeters over the frozen ocean; snow cover lasts about 10 months