Mondo Knows Facts
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of Earth five oceans
Centered around the North Pole, the Arctic Ocean covers roughly 14 million square kilometres.
Almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America, much of its surface is covered by sea ice that expands and shrinks seasonally. The ocean has an average depth of 1,038 metres, significantly shallower than other ocean basins due to vast surrounding continental shelves. Climate warming causes summer sea ice cover to shrink.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: arctic ocean, arctic, oceans, ice
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of Earth five oceans: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Centered around the North Pole, the Arctic Ocean covers roughly 14 million square kilometres. The figure is taken from CIA World Factbook, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.