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The Kara Sea.
Ten years have scarcely elapsed since the Kara Sea was
opened anew to the investigations of science as well as to
traffic and trade by the expeditions of Nordenskiöld in 1875
& 1876. In order to ensure the interests and lessen the risks
of the Siberian trade, nothing could be more desirable than a
thorough knowledge of the hydrographic conformation of the
ice and the water-strata of this sea. I hope, that the present
paper will contribute to prove the importance of further
investigations on this subject. For, as I will try to show in
the following, there are reasons to suppose, that the
possibility of safe navigation in this sea depends not only upon the
mere changes of wind and weather or upon the influence of a
warmer or colder summer, but also upon the conformation of
its deeper strata. Little as we know at present of this subject,
we can not fail to recognize the prevailing difference in
saltness and temperature between the upper and lower layers of
the Kara Sea as the most characteristic feature of its
hydro-graphic constitution. In the summer months a thin layer of
warm and relatively fresh water covers the surface of the
Kara Sea, while a few metres below there is found a stratum
of salt water, cooled unto (and in some cases even beyond) its
freezing point. I have already alluded to this fact in the
introductory chapter of the foregoing paper.
In the eastern and northern parts of the Kara Sea this
difference is greatest on account of the masses of fresh and
warm water emerging from the festuaries of the Obi and
Yenisei rivers. On the hydrographic map [plate 24] I have
inserted some temperatures observed by Captain Mack, one
of the first explorers of the Kara Sea in 1871, showing that
the influence of these rivers still prevails at the latitudes of
Cape Nassau and the Oranie Islands. According to Mack,
Johannesen a. 0. the water here is so fresh as to be almost
drinkable, whenever the sea is calm and unruffled by tempest,
which however soon mingles the water of the thin superficial
stratum with the ice-cold water from below. As for the eastern
part of the sea, I can refer to the observations of the
Vega-expedition from the 10th to the 19th of August, 1878. The
temperature of the surface, which was 4- 8° or 4- 9° at Port
Dickson, gradually diminished and at last sunk below 0° C north
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