Map showing the location of the Fram Strait.

The Fram Strait^[1] is a passage from the Arctic Ocean to the Greenland Sea and Norwegian Sea, between Greenland and Spitsbergen. It is named after the Norwegian ship Fram. The Fram Strait is the major connection between the Arctic Ocean and the world ocean.

Role in Arctic Sea ice[link]

The Fram strait plays a central role in whether the north ice cap will survive future summers. Most of the ice pack appears over the winter, freezing up to 1 m deep, but then melts back to open water by August. The area covered by multi-year ice, however, is thought to have remained relatively stable, an equilibrium between creation (first-year ice that persists into its second winter, becoming multi-year ice) and destruction (flow of sea ice through the Fram Strait and southward along the eastern coast of Greenland). Approximately 90% of sea ice exported from the Arctic is transported by the Eastern Greenland Current, joining the current as it passes through the Fram Strait.^[2]

The amount of sea ice passing through the Fram Strait varies from year to year, as seen in this animation.

As the icepack size diminishes, the speed at which it diminishes is thought to accelerate summer melting of multi-year ice because of a positive feedback loop: open water is less reflective than sea ice, absorbing heat that ice reflects. Transport of sea ice through the Fram Strait affects the global climate through its influence on the thermohaline circulation. This is because sea ice essentially corresponds to fresh water; its salt content is about 4 parts per thousand compared to about 35 parts per thousand for sea water.

Based upon computer modelling, it is believed that 60 to 70% of the fluctuation in the quantity of sea ice flowing through the Fram Strait is correlated with a fluctuation with period 6–7 years in which the Icelandic Low Pressure system extends eastward into the Barents Sea.^[3]

In the past century, the sea surface temperature at Fram Strait has on average warmed roughly 1.9°C (3.5°F), and is 1.4°C (2.5°F) warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period. The warming in this area has likely amplified Arctic shrinkage, and serves as a positive feedback mechanism for transporting more heat to the Arctic.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Daily Satellite Picture

Coordinates: 80°0′N 2°0′W / 80°N 2°W / 80; -2

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Fram in Antarctica in Roald Amundsen's expedition
Career
Name:	Fram
Builder:	Colin Archer, Larvik, Norway
Launched:	1892
In service:	1893
Out of service:	1912
Fate:	Preserved; on display at the Fram Museum, Oslo
General characteristics
Type:	Schooner
Tonnage:	402 grt[1]
Length:	127 ft 8 in (38.9 m)
Beam:	34 ft (10.36 m)
Draft:	15 ft (4.57 m)
Propulsion:	Triple expansion steam engine, 220 hp (164 kW) Sails
Speed:	7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph)
Complement:	16

Fram ("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912. It was designed and built by the Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer for Fridtjof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition in which Fram was supposed to freeze into the Arctic ice sheet and float with it over the North Pole.

Fram is said to have sailed farther north (85°57'N) and farther south (78°41'S) than any other wooden ship. Fram is preserved at the Fram Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Construction[link]

Nansen's ambition was to explore the Arctic farther north than anyone else. To do that, he would have to deal with a problem that many sailing on the polar ocean had encountered before him: the freezing ice could crush a ship. Nansen's idea was to build a ship that could survive the pressure, not by pure strength, but because it would be of a shape designed to let the ice push the ship up, so it would "float" on top of the ice.

Engineering drawings.

Fram is designed as a three masted schooner with a total length of 39 meters and width of 11 meters. The ship is both unusually wide and unusually shallow in order to better withstand the forces of pressing ice.

Nansen commissioned the shipwright Colin Archer from Larvik to construct a vessel with these characteristics. Fram was built with an outer layer of greenheart wood to withstand the ice and almost without a keel to handle the shallow waters Nansen expected to encounter. The rudder and propeller were designed to be retracted into the ship. The ship was also carefully insulated to allow the crew to live on board for up to five years. The ship also included a windmill, which ran a generator to provide electric power for lighting by electric arc lamps.

Initially, Fram was fitted with a steam engine. Prior to Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole in 1910, the engine was replaced with a diesel engine, a first for polar exploration vessels.

Expeditions[link]

Fram was used in several expeditions:

The prow of Fram today as seen in the Fram Museum.

Nansen's 1893–1896 Arctic expedition[link]

Wreckage found at Greenland from USS Jeannette which was lost off Siberia, and driftwood found in the regions of Svalbard and Greenland, suggested that an ocean current flowed beneath the Arctic ice sheet from east to west, bringing driftwood from the Siberian region to Svalbard and further west. Nansen had Fram built in order to explore this theory.

He undertook an expedition that came to last three years. When Nansen realised that Fram would not reach the North Pole directly by the force of the current, he and Hjalmar Johansen set out to reach the pole by ski. Reaching 86° 14' north, he had to turn back to spend the winter at Franz Joseph Land. Nansen and Johansen survived on walrus and polar bear meat and blubber. Finally meeting British explorers, the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition, they managed to reach Norway only days before the Fram arrived back there. The ship had spent nearly three years beset in the ice, reaching 85° 57' N.^[2]

Sverdrup's 1898–1902 Canadian Arctic islands expedition[link]

In 1898, Otto Sverdrup led a scientific expedition to the Canadian Arctic islands. Fram was slightly modified for this journey, its freeboard being increased. Fram left harbour on 24 June 1898, with 17 men on board. Their aim was to chart the lands of the Arctic Islands, and to sample the geology, flora and fauna. The expeditions lasted till 1902, leading to charts covering 260,000 km², more than any other Arctic expedition.^[3]

Amundsen's 1910–1912 South Pole expedition[link]

For Amundsen's South Pole expedition, Fram was fitted with this diesel engine.

Fram was used by Roald Amundsen in his southern polar expedition from 1910 to 1912, the first to reach the South Pole, during which it reached 78° 41' S.

[edit] Preservation of Fram

The ship was left to decay in storage between 1912 and the late 1920s, when Lars Christensen, Otto Sverdrup and Oscar Wisting initiated efforts to preserve her. In 1935 the ship was installed in the Fram Museum where she now stands.

Named after Fram[link]

Scottish-Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer designed the ship.

Fram model.

• Fram Island (Ostrov Frama), an island close to the Komsomolskaya Pravda Islands, Laptev Sea
• Framheim (literally "Home of the Fram"), Amundsen's Base at the Bay of Whales in Antarctica during his quest for the South Pole
• Fram Rupes, an escarpment on Mercury
• Fram crater, a small crater on Mars, visited by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2004
• Fram Basin, the deepest point in the Arctic Ocean
• Fram Strait, a passage from the Arctic Ocean to the Greenland Sea and Norwegian Sea, between Greenland and Spitsbergen.
• Fram, a play by Tony Harrison, premièred at the National Theatre London, 2008
• In Arthur Ransome's children's book, Winter Holiday, the children use the name, Fram, for their Uncle Jim's houseboat, trapped in the ice on the lake which becomes the inspiration for some of their adventures.

[edit] Other ships named Fram

• A ship built in 1958 and named after Axel Enström was later renamed Fram.^[4]
• Harald V, the King of Norway has had a number of sailboats for regatta use named Fram. He became world champion in sailing with Fram X in 1987 and is currently^[when?] racing in Fram XVI (2006).
• A passenger vessel built in 2006 for Hurtigruten Group was named MS Fram after the original Fram. It operates in the Arctic Ocean and for cruises around Antarctica.

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Fram

Notes

Bibliography

Coordinates: 59°54′12″N 10°41′58″E / 59.90333°N 10.69944°E / 59.90333; 10.69944