Map of the Week - The Arctic Circle and Argo Floats

This week the EU4Ocean "Let's Listen To The Arctic Ocean" event took place, organized by the EU4Ocean Coalition. The EU4Ocean Coalition is a bottom-up inclusive initiative supported by the European Commission, aimed at uniting voices from European organisations, projects and people, to make the Ocean a concern of everyone. The aim of the event was to give visibility to all relevant Arctic Ocean related communities, including schools and pupils, teachers, marine science educators, stakeholders from marine-related sectors, NGOs, youth, policy-makers and government representatives, public institutions, researchers and academia, conservationists, entrepreneurs, other ocean professionals as well as general citizens.

Did you know you can zoom in on a region in the European Atlas of the Seas? The Map of the Week shows the Arctic Circle, running at 66°33’ north of the Equator. It is one of the two polar circles - the other polar circle is the Antarctic Circle, running south of the Equator at an equal distance - and part of the geographic grid.[1] A geographic grid is an imaginary network of lines superimposed on the earth, serving as a reference system to pinpoint any location on Earth. The vertical lines are called the longitude and the horizontal lines are the latitude. The intersection of these two points determines the exact location. Longitudinal lines measure degrees east to west, running vertically between the north and south poles. Latitudinal lines measure degrees north to south, with 0 degrees being the exact halfway point between the north and south poles. The map also shows the extent and positions of Argo floats in that region, free drifting profiling floats that collect environmental ocean data (e.g., temperature, salinity and current velocity of the upper ocean layers), thereby contributing to our knowledge of ocean dynamics and heat content.  

Wish to know more?

• Watch the slideshow on the European Atlas of the Seas and the Arctic published in the Teachers Corner;
• Listen to the Podcasts “If Oceans could speak” dedicated to the Arctic;
• Learn about the role and the work of the Arctic Council;
• Meet the Arctic Indigenous organizations that hold Permanent Participant status in the Arctic Council;
• Read about the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC);
• Discover the activities of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS).

Access the map

The data in this map are provided by the European Environment Agency and EMODnet.