Kara Sea: environmental problems and ways to solve them. Expert opinions

Washed northern coast of Russia Kara Sea on the map is located between the archipelago of the Northern Land and the islands of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya. It is very cold, above zero water temperature rises only where it flows into the great Siberian rivers. Almost the whole year it is covered with thick ice. The depth of the Kara Sea is small - mostly from thirty meters to a hundred, there are several places where a maximum of six hundred meters to the bottom. Its area is 880 square kilometers. The resources of the Kara Sea are enormous.

The Islands

Widely open to the basin of the oceanic Arctic, for the most part the Kara Sea lies on the continental shelf, so it is characterized by a number of islands that are located along the coast. This is the outskirts of the sea, the mainland. The coastline of the Kara Sea is riddled with bays, into which rivers flow, bringing to him thousands of square kilometers of fresh water a year. In addition to the usual navaga and saury, there is a lot of valuable fish here: Nelma, muxun, and omul are found.

The islands of the Kara Sea are mostly small, with the largest number of them on the Asian shores. The largest of them - Shokalsky, White, Dixon, Vilkitsky, Russian. And the largest archipelagos are the Izvestia of the Central Election Commission, the Arctic Institute, and Sergei Kirov. In the north of the sea there are few islands, and they are small: Wiese, Ushakov, Schmidt. The Kara Sea on the map is easy to find precisely because it is located between the islands.

Coast

It almost always storms. Therefore, the coastline of the Kara Sea is winding so much that it seems to be rugged. Especially this distinguishes the eastern shore of the New Earth - entirely fjords. And the continent is also as if skilful - huge pieces of it are under the water Obskaya and Baidaratskaya lips, thus forming the Yamal Peninsula. Further large bays - Yenisei, Pyasinsky, Gydansky. The entire coast of Novaya Zemlya - with hills and cliffs, the morphological nature of the coast varies from abrasion to accumulative and ice, and the continent, on the other hand, is flat and low, cliffs on the shore only in places.

Climate

The Kara Sea basin is located in the Arctic, in its high latitudes, there are very close ties between it and the Arctic basin, so the climate there is severe, as it should be in the sea and the polar. The New Earth, stretching between the seas, does not let warm air and currents from the Atlantic into Kara, so even the nearby Barents Sea is much warmer. The temperature of the Kara Sea is constantly close to freezing, here in any of the summer months it can snow.

In autumn and winter it is here that the Siberian anticyclone is formed, the north wind prevails, and more often the storm wind. The New Earth is almost constantly under hurricanes - this is the so-called Novaya Zemlya bora, lasting from several hours to several days. In the Kara Sea, Siberian rivers bring half of all the water that flows into the Arctic. Yenisei, Ob, Pyasina, Taz and Pur, plus many smaller rivers, affect the salinity of the Kara Sea, and its temperature and other hydrological properties.

Structure of sea water

Sea water is divided horizontally into three types. The uppermost waters - the Arctic surface waters, which occupy the largest area here, depend on the depth of the Kara Sea in this place and how much fresh water the rivers have brought. Wherever shallow - up to two hundred meters, almost unsalted water can fill the sea almost to the bottom. Density is low because the salinity of the Kara Sea is declining because of the large influx of fresh water and varies from five percent around the Ob Bay to thirty-five percent in the northern regions. Less salt - faster freezing. And the deeper - the water is salty.

The second type of Kara water is the mouthwater, which is mixed with salty and cold currents of the Arctic surface of the sea. Water of high temperature and low density is obtained due to a lack of salt, which forms the upper layer on denser salt water. Then deep vertical currents mix the layers a little, but the upper one still remains warmer and less salty. It should be noted that the characteristics of the Kara Sea in this respect vary from year to year. The water temperature in July at the southern coast can reach three degrees, and north under the ice is close to freezing at any time of the year - minus one and a half degrees.

The bottom of the Kara Sea

The relief of the bottom is relatively even in the central sections, mainly the depth of the Kara Sea fluctuates sharply. In the south and in the eastern part, closer to the mainland, there are numerous pits and bottom elevations to different heights. North of the mainland are the slopes of the Central Kara Upland, which are divided by two troughs: the western one - St. Anne and the eastern one - Voronin's filth. It's the deepest here. And one more depression (up to five hundred meters) is near Novaya Zemlya - Novaya Zemlya.

Currents

Since the density of water is very different and at a depth it grows abruptly, currents appear between the layers, which try to achieve uniformity. Constant storms also help this process: in the center of the sea and in the west, the layers are mixed to the horizontal at ten to fifteen meters, but in shallow waters, between the confluence of the Ob and the Yenisei, the layers are poorly combined due to desalination - only five meters. The Kara Sea is rich in currents that go beyond it, but the most interesting are those that have closed in a circle only on the area of this sea.

Inside the flow are fairly stable, they depend primarily on the circulation of neighboring seas with the Arctic basin. And, of course, sewage from large rivers supports this stability. The Kara Sea is completely enclosed by a ring of currents. In the west, the water from the Barents Sea moves to Yamal through the southern straits of Novaya Zemlya, it is picked up by the Ob-Yenisei currents and moves north, then this mass of water branches out, a part returns to the south, again to Novaya Zemlya, passes through the Kara Gates, merges with the first The current of the Barents Sea and - the next round.

Arctic

In autumn and winter the Kara Sea is completely covered with ice, and in summer only a small part is released. In September ice formation begins in the north, and by October it is already covered with ice by the south. From October to May, almost all the sea is one ice kingdom. The ice is diverse in appearance, and in age. With coasts, fast ice is mandatory. In the north-east - a continuous strip of fixed ice, from the White Island to the archipelago of Nordenskiold and the Northern Earth.

In the southwest, fast ice does not occupy large areas. To the south of the frozen ice there are zones of pure water or young ice. Here the Yamal and Amderminskaya polynyas are located, and in the center of the sea there is the Ob-Yenisei polynya. This does not mean that there is no ice here. He is drifting. The maximum thickness of about two meters is thin, young at all. The Novaya Zemlya ice massif in summer thaws without leaving the place. And in the northern regions of the sea, ice is unshakable. He's always there.

Arctic Shelf

Now in all the seas, adjacent to the Arctic Ocean, there are strong changes in ice extent. The Kara Sea is no exception. Russia has more than seventy percent of the Arctic shelf, which must be investigated. There is a very extensive retreat of the ice edge from the shore in the summer. Huge water spaces that were immobile are released. The climate is changing, the warming is coming, and with it the human activity in the Arctic will change. Characteristics of the Kara Sea, too, is not a constant value, unfortunately.

Research

First of all, there are giant hydrocarbon deposits - Leningrad and Rusanovsky - on the shelf of the central and western parts of the sea. So, soon there will be pipelines, towers and tankers. The Arctic ecosystem is not the middle latitudes, where the consequences of any accidents are removed, albeit difficult. Here it is almost impossible.

The plans to start development of deposits in ten years, but the timing can be much closer. Rosneft has already made a statement that the preparatory work at the pits will continue without the participation of the US company ExxonMobil, with which prior to the sanctions, agreements on joint development of deposits were concluded. The Kara Sea will also be explored.

Ecological problems

Taking in the largest in the region freshwater runoff, the sea is polluted by everything that is formed on the vast territory of industrial Siberia. Hence, all the climatic problems, all industrial accidents and even catastrophes, passing through the water arteries, settle in the Arctic. And first of all, it gets into the Kara Sea. Environmental problems are just beginning. Pollution with heavy metals with the waters of the Ob and the Yenisei grows every year.

Petroleum products

The Northern Sea Route, with its regular movement of heavy vessels, is particularly bad for the situation. The entire vast area of their movement is contaminated with oil products. But the fauna and flora that the Kara Sea has, ecological problems can ruin. Although the coastal zones are considered to be polluted moderately (measurements are constantly carried out near Amderma and Dixon settlements), but the considerable area allocated for maritime navigation is already polluted. And it is not known what is more detrimental to the Kara Sea. Environmental problems are still being addressed poorly.

Enisei-Father

The concentration of heavy metals in the mouths of the Ob and the Yenisei increases both quantitatively and qualitatively. Copper, zinc, manganese, lead, tin, iron - this is not the whole list of what gets into the Kara Sea. Environmental problems are also brought by the metallurgical industry of the city of Norilsk, hence the water contaminated with aerosol materials flows.

Around this city all the rivers and lakes are polluted thoroughly, even excessively, but flowing from here to the Yenisei Bay, the big river manages to be significantly cleansed in some miraculous way.

Radioactive waste

The above is not the main trouble that the Kara Sea suffers. Environmental problems really began with radioactive contamination. Since the sixties of the twentieth century, numerous surface, air, underwater and underground nuclear explosions have been conducted on Novaya Zemlya. As a result, only thirteen million cesium-137 curies fell into the atmosphere. How this affected the resources of the Kara Sea - one can imagine.

Approximately from the same time in all northern seas there is a burial place of every possible radioactive waste. The East of the shelf on Novaya Zemlya is the main place for this purpose: up to seventy percent of all active wastes are flooded here at a depth of twelve to four hundred meters. A special danger is the high-activity reactors of nuclear submarines with spent nuclear fuel.

Here lies the icebreaker "Lenin" and eleven thousand containers with the most dangerous cargo. Although regular control measurements do not show an excess of radioactivity in all the gulfs of the Kara Sea, they potentially carry death to all living creatures at great distances from the burial site.

Ice plow

For several decades the two most powerful organizations of the USSR were emptied into the Kara Sea: civil and naval nuclear fleets. There not only containers are buried, but also volumetric structures that can not be recycled. All this lies along the shore of the long-suffering New Earth. Everything is preserved as safely as possible. No deviations from the radioactive background on the island and around it were detected. However, man has never been able to defeat the natural elements.

Many burials are made in shallow water, and there from time to time there is an ice exhalation - plowing, that is, ice destruction of rocks on the bed of the glacier. Through the examination the glacier gets freedom and starts moving. Together with the products of destruction. How it happens: the formed not too thick ice from a strong storm breaks, stands on end with huge hummocks - endless fields of such huge teeth.

Then the storm calms down for a short while, and the hummocks quickly fall into huge masses of ice, similar to the incredible size of the plow. And again the storm. And again, progress. Standing blocks become sails and plow the bottom in shallow waters to a depth of fifteen meters. And for pipelines that are not deeper than ten or twelve meters, this is dangerous. But if containers with radioactive waste are so plagued, this is even more terrible.