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Arctic Ocean
The smallest and shallowest ocean, capped by sea ice
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's oceans, about 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles) of water centered on the North Pole and nearly enclosed by the northern coasts of North America, Europe, and Asia. For much of the year a great deal of its surface is locked beneath floating sea ice, making it less a familiar open sea than a frozen lid over a cold, dark basin.
Despite its small size it has real depth in places, reaching about 5,550 meters (18,210 feet) at the Molloy Deep, and its floor is split by the Lomonosov Ridge into deep basins. The ocean connects to the Pacific only through the narrow Bering Strait and exchanges most of its water with the Atlantic. Beneath the ice live specialized communities of life, while polar bears, seals, and walruses hunt along its margins and the cracks in the pack ice.
No part of the planet is changing faster. The Arctic is warming several times more quickly than the global average, and its summer sea ice has shrunk dramatically in recent decades. That retreat is opening new shipping routes and access to seabed resources, raising questions of navigation, sovereignty, and the fate of an ecosystem built entirely around ice.