Location of Fram Strait with surrounding geographical places

The Fram Strait is the passage between

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

and

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

, located roughly between 77°N and 81°N latitudes and centered on the

prime meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (geography), meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. On a spheroid, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian ...

. The

and Norwegian Seas lie south of Fram Strait, while the Nansen Basin of the Arctic Ocean lies to the north. Fram Strait is noted for being the only deep connection between the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

and the

World Ocean The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as ''oceans'' (the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and ...

s. The dominant oceanographic features of the region are the West Spitsbergen Current on the east side of the strait and the East Greenland Current on the west.

Description

Fram Strait is the northernmost ocean area having ice-free conditions throughout the year. The width of the strait is about 450 km, but because of the wide

continental shelves A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island ...

of Greenland and Spitsbergen, the deep portion of Fram Strait is only about 300 km wide. The ocean over the Greenland continental shelf is often covered with ice. Within Fram Strait, the sill connecting the Arctic and Fram Strait is 2545 m deep. The Knipovich Ridge, the northernmost section of the

Mid-Atlantic Ridge The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a Divergent boundary, divergent or constructive Plate tectonics, plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest mountai ...

, extends northward through the strait to connect to the Nansen-Gakkel Ridge of the Arctic Ocean. A rift valley, caused by sea-floor spreading, runs adjacent and parallel to the Knipovich Ridge. The Molloy Deep within Fram Strait is the deepest point of the Arctic. This small basin at 79°8.5′N and 2°47′E has a maximum depth of ±(See also: Litke Deep). The Yermak Plateau, with a mean depth of about 650 m, lies to the northwest of Spitsbergen. Historically, Fram Strait was home to a large population of

Bowhead whale The bowhead whale (''Balaena mysticetus''), sometimes called the Greenland right whale, Arctic whale, and polar whale, is a species of baleen whale belonging to the family Balaenidae and is the only living representative of the genus '' Balaena' ...

s, then called the ''Greenland right whale''. By mid-17th century, the Svalbard population of Bowhead whales was reduced to near extinction by excessive

whaling Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16t ...

(See also: Whaling in Spitsbergen; Smeerenburg). Western Fram Strait may be a wintering ground for this

Critically Endangered An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...

population.

Etymology

The use of the name "Fram Strait" for the passage between

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...

and Greenland appears to have come into common use in the oceanographic literature in the 1970s. Fram Strait is named after the Norwegian ship '' Fram''. In an 1893 expedition led by

Fridtjof Nansen Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (; 10 October 1861 – 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and co-founded the ...

, the Fram drifted for two years across the Arctic before exiting the Arctic through what is now known as Fram Strait. According to glaciologist and

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

Moira Dunbar, an early adopter of the name, the name "Fram Strait" originated in the Russian scientific literature. While in common use, particularly in the oceanographic scientific literature, the name appears to be unofficial.

Oceanography

Fram Strait is the only deep-water connection between the World Oceans and the Arctic. Other gateways are the Barents Sea Opening (BSO), the

Bering Strait The Bering Strait ( , ; ) is a strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. The present Russia–United States maritime boundary is at 168° 58' ...

and various small channels in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. They are all shallower than Fram Strait, leaving Fram Strait the only route by which deep water can be exchanged between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This exchange occurs in both directions, with specific water masses identified with specific regions flowing between the Oceans. Water with characteristics of the deep

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

and Eurasian Basins of the Arctic are observed leaving the Arctic in the deep western side of Fram Strait, for example. On the eastern side, cold water from the Norwegian Sea is observed entering the Arctic below the West Spitsbergen Current. In recent years the nature and interactions of these water masses have been changing, symptoms of the changes occurring with the ocean's climate.

Current systems

Warm, salty water is transported northward from the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

by the West Spitsbergen Current in the east of the strait. The West Spitsbergen Current is the northernmost branch of the North Atlantic Current system. This water forms a water mass called the Atlantic water. The sub-surface flow has a strong seasonality with a minimal volume transport in winter. This current transports

internal energy The internal energy of a thermodynamic system is the energy of the system as a state function, measured as the quantity of energy necessary to bring the system from its standard internal state to its present internal state of interest, accoun ...

into the

. The northward velocity is maximum in winter, so the ''

heat In thermodynamics, heat is energy in transfer between a thermodynamic system and its surroundings by such mechanisms as thermal conduction, electromagnetic radiation, and friction, which are microscopic in nature, involving sub-atomic, ato ...

transport'' is highest in winter. On the west side of the strait, the East Greenland Current flows southward on the

Shelf. The current carries is relatively cold and fresh water out of the Arctic that corresponds to a water mass called Polar water. The Fram Strait area is located downwind of the Transpolar Drift and therefore covered by multi-year ice in the west of the strait, next to the coast of

. Approximately 90% of sea ice exported from the Arctic is transported by the East Greenland Current. (Sea ice essentially corresponds to fresh water, since its salt content of 4 per mil is much less than the 35 per mil for sea water.) A 2019 estimate states that about "80% of the water exchanged between the Arctic ice cap and the world’s oceans passes through the Fram Strait."

Long-time observations

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the

Norwegian Polar Institute The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI; ) is Norway's central governmental institution for scientific research, mapping and environmental monitoring in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The NPI is a directorate under Norway's Ministry of Climate and Envir ...

(NPI) have maintained long term monitoring measurements in Fram Strait to obtain volume- and energy-budgets through this choke point. The observations also serve to assess the development of the

as a sink for terrestrial organic carbon. The AWI=NPI observing array consists of a line of up to 16 moorings across Fram Strait. The mooring line has been maintained since 1997 with a spacing of roughly 25 km. At up to five different depths, the moored array measures the water velocity, temperature, and

salinity Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of salt (chemistry), salt dissolved in a body of water, called saline water (see also soil salinity). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water; the latter is dimensio ...

of the water column.

Importance for climate

Computer simulations suggest that 60 to 70% of the fluctuation of the sea ice flowing through the Fram Strait is correlated with a 6–7 year fluctuation in which the Icelandic Low Pressure system extends eastward into the

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; , ; ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.World Wildlife Fund, 2008. It was known earlier among Russi ...

. The amount of sea ice passing through the Fram Strait varies from year to year and affects the global

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...

through its influence on

thermohaline circulation Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale Ocean current, ocean circulation driven by global density gradients formed by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. The name ''thermohaline'' is derived from ''wikt:thermo-, thermo-'', r ...

. The warming in the Fram Strait region has likely amplified Arctic shrinkage, and serves as a

positive feedback Positive feedback (exacerbating feedback, self-reinforcing feedback) is a process that occurs in a feedback loop where the outcome of a process reinforces the inciting process to build momentum. As such, these forces can exacerbate the effects ...

mechanism for transporting more internal energy to the

. In the past century, the

sea surface temperature Sea surface temperature (or ocean surface temperature) is the ocean temperature, temperature of ocean water close to the surface. The exact meaning of ''surface'' varies in the literature and in practice. It is usually between and below the sea ...

at Fram Strait has on average warmed roughly 1.9 °C (3.5 °F), and is 1.4 °C (2.5 °F) warmer than during the

Medieval Warm Period The Medieval Warm Period (MWP), also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum or the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that lasted from about to about . Climate proxy records show peak warmth occu ...

References

{{Authority control Straits of the Arctic Ocean Straits of Norway Physical oceanography Currents of the Atlantic Ocean International straits Geography of North America Geography of Europe