ARCTIC SEA ICE 105 



But if we accept the area of open water in the Arctic Pack in 

 summer according to Makarov as equal to 10 per cent (see, above, 

 p. 96), we may conclude with confidence that in the pack-ice region 

 in summer, which then occupies the whole space between the coast 

 and the edge of the Arctic Pack (since fast-ice does not exist in sum- 

 rner), this ratio of open water is considerably higher because at 

 the time that the increase in the area of open water takes place in 

 the Arctic Pack mainly as a result of the piling up, hummocking, and 

 telescoping of the ice, in the fast-ice belt it takes place as a result of 

 the disappearance of the one-year-old ice. Yet this ratio varies 

 greatly; just as it depends on the local meteorological conditions for 

 the individual sea, so it depends on its physico-geographical condi- 

 tions for the separate parts of the sea itself. It is no exaggeration to 

 say that in the coastal belt of Arctic Eurasia, for instance — with the 

 exception of the particularly unfavorable places where ice masses 

 accumulate, as in Long Strait between Wrangel Island and the 

 mainland, Tsesarevich Alexei Strait between Northern Land and Cape 

 Chelyuskin, the region of the Taimyr skerries, and the southern 

 part of the Kara Sea — the water area in summer (August) along the 

 whole distance between Bering Strait and Novaya Zemlya on the 

 average amounts to nearly 50 per cent of the total area. 



In the narrow segment along the northern coast of Alaska the 

 area of open water also is near the same figure. 



A Genetic Classification of Sea Ice* 



The following classification is submitted simply as a contribu- 

 tion to the clarification of the existing terminology. It is an out- 

 growth of the writer's desire to bring into harmony for his own use 

 the numerous and often uncorrelated terms employed in polar litera- 

 ture. To attain this end it has seemed to him possible to organize 

 these terms in their causal relationships, and he has attempted to do 

 this in the accompanying synoptical diagram (Fig. 9) and defini- 



the period 1869-1911 and of the prevalence of various wind directions, analyzed all the possible cases 

 of distribution and state of the ice in the Kara Sea. He establishes five type conditions corresponding 

 to the distribution and state of the ice and the accessibility of the Kara Sea by way of one or the other 

 of its entrances (Yugor Strait, Kara Strait, Matochkin Shar, or around the north of Novaya Zemlya). 

 See E. Leshaft: Ldy Karskago Morya i dostupnost ego dlya soobshchenii s Sibiryu (Ice of the Kara 

 Sea and Its Accessibility for Communication with Siberia), Zapiski po Hidrografii, Vol. 37, Part II, 

 1913. PP- 161-260, with 5 maps and 7 tables. 



As to the region between Cape Dezhnev and Cape Chelyuskin the most complete and modern 

 Arctic Pilot is K. Neupokoev's work: Materialy po lotsii Sibirskogo Morya (Materials on Sailing 

 Directions in the Siberian Sea), Zapiski po Hidrografii, Vol. 46, 1923, Supplement, pp. 1-53. with a 

 chart. 



Annual reports entitled "The State of the Ice in the Arctic Seas" are published (in Danish and 

 English) by the Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, in its Nautical-Meteorological Annual 

 {Nautisk Meleorologisk Aarbog). These contain excellent monthly maps of the state of the ice for 

 April, May, June, July, and August of the given year, showing graphically the progressive develop- 

 ment of open water as the season advances. 



8 This classification relates to sea ice alone. Ice floating on the sea but of land derivation, such as 

 icebergs and shelf ice, is not included. 



