THE MARION EXPEDITION TO DAVIS STRAIT AND BAFFIN BAY 



ARCTIC ICE— WITH REFERENCE TO ITS DISTRIBUTION 

 TO THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN 



Edward H. Smith 



Spread over the top of the world is a hiitre white coverino; of sea 

 ice about 3,500,000 square miles in area, which during winter expands 

 outward until at maximum, 27 per cent of the North Atlantic (the 

 polar sea included), is ice decked. Add to this total 805,650 square 

 miles of land areas, which in many places are submerged by several 

 thousand feet of solid ice and we begin to realize the great extensions 

 of this solid state of water. 



The great polar ice cap covering 1,800.000 square miles of the sea 



never melts. During winter the basin becomes greatly congested 



: through freezing and rafting of the fields and little open water is to 



be found. Lanes of open water appear along the coast for a few 



i brief weeks in summer, and leads and pools appear throughout the 



ipack. Two great icy arms extend from the central polar core, one 



along the east side of Greenland, the other down the American shore. 



Every year hundreds of stjuare miles of ice fields perform journeys 



1.500 iniles or more in length, projecting barriers halfway from the 



pole to the Equator. 



The annual discharge and summer melting amounts to about 1,100,- 

 000 square miles of northern sea ice. The great chilling effect at- 

 tending the latent heat of melting combined with the cooling of 

 northern currents are two of the Arctic's major geophysical factors. 

 Annual variations in tlie amount of ice and cold water discharged 

 into the North Atlantic are known to be a significant control of 

 European weather. 



The berg, of all ice forms in the polar regions, is the most spec- 

 tacular. Greenland produces somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 

 icebergs every year. Literally thousands of bergs are scattered at 

 times in Greenland coastal waters. 



The wanderings of the bergs are freer than those of the sea ice 

 Ix'cause. with their massive proportions, they sometimes survive long 

 journeys. The icebergs that achieve farthest south are those travel- 

 ing the 1,500-mile pathway down the Labrador coast. 



Arctic ice, particularly "the stream past Newfoundland, penetrates 

 deeper into the North Atlantic, due partly to the shape of the latter, 

 than into any other ocean. This invasion, moreover, for about four 

 months of spring and summer creates a distinct menace to the main 

 arteries of commerce on the most frequently traveled ocean of the 

 world. The fact that the regions embracing the largest number of 

 bergs are those enveloped in fog a large percentage of spring and 

 summer, greatly accentuates the danger from ice. 



i 



