Drift of the Fram across the Arctic
Deriva del Fram a través del Ártico
- Date
- 1893-1896 · confidence high
- Place
- Central Arctic Ocean (Norwegian expedition), Norway
- Credited to
- Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup and the crew of the Fram
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Nansen had the Fram, a round-hulled ship designed by Colin Archer, deliberately frozen into the ice near the New Siberian Islands and drift for three years across the Arctic. It proved the transpolar current and that beneath the ice lies a deep ocean, not land.
The idea came from wreckage of the Jeannette, sunk in 1881 near the New Siberian Islands, that turned up in Greenland. Coordinates are approximate, since the ship drifted between 78° and 85° N.
What it led to
- soundings of over 3,000 m in the polar basin
- ocean-current theory (Ekman) from ice drift
- Nansen and Johansen reached 86°14′ N in 1895, a latitude record
- the MOSAiC expedition (2019-2020) repeated the drift with the icebreaker Polarstern