Compare Arctic Ocean (2001) - Paracel Islands (2003)

Compare Arctic Ocean (2001) z Paracel Islands (2003)

	Arctic Ocean (2001)	Paracel Islands (2003)

Airports	-	1 (2002)
Airports - with paved runways	-	total: 1 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 (2002)
Area	total: 14.056 million sq km note: includes Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, Northwest Passage, and other tributary water bodies	total: NA sq km land: NA sq km water: 0 sq km
Area - comparative	slightly less than 1.5 times the size of the US	NA
Background	The Arctic Ocean is the smallest of the world's five oceans (after the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and the recently delimited Southern Ocean). The Northwest Passage (US and Canada) and Northern Sea Route (Norway and Russia) are two important seasonal waterways. A sparse network of air, ocean, river, and land routes circumscribes the Arctic Ocean.	The Paracel Islands are surrounded by productive fishing grounds and by potential oil and gas reserves. In 1932, French Indochina annexed the islands and set up a weather station on Pattle Island; maintenance was continued by its successor, Vietnam. China has occupied the Paracel Islands since 1974, when its troops seized a South Vietnamese garrison occupying the western islands. The islands are claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam.
Climate	polar climate characterized by persistent cold and relatively narrow annual temperature ranges; winters characterized by continuous darkness, cold and stable weather conditions, and clear skies; summers characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones with rain or snow	tropical
Coastline	45,389 km	518 km
Country name	-	conventional long form: none conventional short form: Paracel Islands
Disputes - international	some maritime disputes (see littoral states)	occupied by China, but claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam
Economy - overview	Economic activity is limited to the exploitation of natural resources, including petroleum, natural gas, fish, and seals.	China announced plans in 1997 to open the islands for tourism.
Elevation extremes	lowest point: Fram Basin -4,665 m highest point: sea level 0 m	lowest point: South China Sea 0 m highest point: unnamed location on Rocky Island 14 m
Environment - current issues	endangered marine species include walruses and whales; fragile ecosystem slow to change and slow to recover from disruptions or damage; thinning polar icepack	NA
Geographic coordinates	90 00 N, 0 00 E	16 30 N, 112 00 E
Geography - note	major chokepoint is the southern Chukchi Sea (northern access to the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait); strategic location between North America and Russia; shortest marine link between the extremes of eastern and western Russia; floating research stations operated by the US and Russia; maximum snow cover in March or April about 20 to 50 centimeters over the frozen ocean; snow cover lasts about 10 months	composed of 130 small coral islands and reefs divided into the northeast Amphitrite Group and the western Crescent Group
Irrigated land	-	0 sq km (1998 est.)
Land boundaries	-	0 km
Land use	-	arable land: 0% permanent crops: 0% other: 100% (1998 est.)
Location	body of water between Europe, Asia, and North America, mostly north of the Arctic Circle	Southeastern Asia, group of small islands and reefs in the South China Sea, about one-third of the way from central Vietnam to the northern Philippines
Map references	Arctic Region	Southeast Asia
Maritime claims	-	NA
Military - note	-	occupied by China
Natural hazards	ice islands occasionally break away from northern Ellesmere Island; icebergs calved from glaciers in western Greenland and extreme northeastern Canada; permafrost in islands; virtually ice locked from October to June; ships subject to superstructure icing from October to May	typhoons
Natural resources	sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, polymetallic nodules, oil and gas fields, fish, marine mammals (seals and whales)	none
Population	-	no indigenous inhabitants note: there are scattered Chinese garrisons (July 2003 est.)
Ports and harbors	Churchill (Canada), Murmansk (Russia), Prudhoe Bay (US)	small Chinese port facilities on Woody Island and Duncan Island being expanded
Terrain	central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that averages about 3 meters in thickness, although pressure ridges may be three times that size; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight-line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland); the icepack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen Cordillera, and Lomonosov Ridge)	mostly low and flat
Waterways	-	none

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