Sea ice observations made during the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic expedition 1910–1915

Abstract

Over the period 1910–1915 the Imperial Russian Navy's Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition aboard the icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach was engaged in charting the Northern Sea Route. After a brief initial foray into the Chukchi Sea in the late summer of 1910, the two ships pushed progressively farther west over the following three summers, returning to Vladivostok each fall. In 1914 the plan was for the two ships to make the through‐passage to Arkhangel'sk but heavy ice conditions forced them to winter in the eastern part of the Kara Sea, and hence they did not reach Arkhangel'sk until the summer of 1915.

Regular observations on ice types and concentrations were made throughout the expedition and the results are presented in a generalized fashion. Regularly recurring accumulations, or ice massifs, were identified for the first time; these are now known as the Severnaya Zemlya, Taymyr, Yana, New Siberian, Ayon and Long massifs. Expedition members also identified for the first time the fact that in the Eastern Arctic ice conditions are commonly “reversed,”; with heavier ice near the mainland coast and lighter ice concentrations farther out to sea. Sea ice investigations during the wintering included studies of temperature variations within the ice, the growth of ice of various ages, ice melt, sublimation of snow and ice, the dynamics of break‐up and the genesis of crack formation.