Few people have doubts as to which ocean is the coldest on our planet. Without a doubt, this is the Arctic. It lies between continents such as North America and Eurasia, covering an area of just over 13 million square kilometers. In the southern part, the ocean is almost completely within the Arctic Circle. The average depth here is 1225 meters, while the largest is 5527 meters.
The coldest ocean on the planet in the central part has a deep-sea oval basin 2250 x 1130 kilometers in size. It is also known as the Polar or Arctic basin. Almost half of the ocean floor is a shelf, within which there are a large number of solitary islands and archipelagos. These include Greenland, the New Siberian Islands, Severnaya and Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard and others. It should be noted that the coldest ocean in the world does not have any islands of oceanic origin.
Precipitation here falls mainly in the form of snow, while rains are extremely rare. Throughout the year, most of the ocean area is covered with ice, the average thickness of which is three meters. Its western region is characterized by northwestern and northern winds, which are the main cause of the harsh Arctic climate. In the eastern part of the basin, southwestern and southern winds prevail, and therefore the coldest ocean has a milder climate.
The air does not get very hot in summer. Its average temperature in different regions of the Arctic Ocean varies from two degrees of frost to twelve degrees of heat. In winter, it can fall here below the mark of minus forty degrees. Winter also often causes storms.
The coldest ocean on the planet cannot boast a rich flora and fauna. The reason for this is harsh climatic conditions, as well as widespread ice. The most developed organic world is in the region where there is a continuous connection with the Atlantic Ocean, in other words - in the White, Barents and Kara Seas. About two thousand species of animals live here (including whales), as well as a huge number of fish. In those waters where water from warm currents gets , you can find many birds on island coasts and rocks.
In the region of Alaska, Canada and Eastern Siberia, the organic world is very poor. The same situation is in the central part of the Arctic Ocean, which is covered with ice throughout the year. Here phytoplankton is represented mainly by diatoms. Some of them live on the ice surface. As for zooplankton, the coldest ocean on the planet in this part is inhabited by less than eighty species, and among the fish dominated by Navaga, Arctic cod and cod. Seals, walruses, belugas, narwhals and other oceanic mammals can often be found on the outskirts of perennial ice. Their fishing is now strictly prohibited and is controlled by numerous international documents. The most striking representative of the terrestrial wildlife here is a polar bear.