Talk:Greenland Sea

Part of...

The Greenland Sea is actually the part of the Artctic Ocean according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Wizardist (talk) 17:20, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Arctic or Atlantic

User:Materialscientist just reverted my addition describing how the sea is sometimes considered part of the Atlantic and sometimes part of the Arctic, saying "very encyclopedical edit, but look at the publishers of those books - Britannica beats them all at once" (diff). I'm not sure I understand. These sources show that the sea is in fact sometimes considered part of the Atlantic. Also, Britannica is a fine source, but hardly the final authority on this topic. I'd like to see additional sources, especially ones more focused on oceanography. Pfly (talk) 23:55, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, Britannica is an authority on anything, but they seem to be rather careful on what they publish and thus scarce on details, but they back the Arctic Ocean. Great Soviet Encyclopedia is another such source, which you can Google translate.

It is a fine approach to document various existing opinions, but from the three books you added, two are published by Infobase Publishing, which does not seem an authority. One is from Taylor & Francis, which is better, but it is a translation of a French book of 1996, which again seems to be from a rare publisher.

This section contains a quote from IHO's Limits of Oceans and Seas, which should solve the issue. Cheers. Materialscientist (talk) 00:09, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I dug up a number of other sources, but haven't found a truly strong definitive one--thought some better than Infobase. However, I must go, so will have to leave things as they are for now. One thing though, the IHO Limits of the Sea document, cited on the Borders of the Oceans (and quite a few other pages), does not say which seas are parts of which oceans. It merely defines the limits of the various seas and points out: "The limits given of the [...] oceans exclude the seas lying within each of them, the limits of which are elsewhere described in this publication..." (page 6). That "elsewhere in this publication" sounds like a good lead, but wherever this elsewhere is, it isn't in the document cited on that page, or any other I've seen. On some talk page I've seen people describing their attempts to find this "elsewhere" info and failing. As far as I can tell, it does not exist online. Pfly (talk) 00:47, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, though I don't see it as a problem in this particular case, as IHO says that the northern limit of the Atlantic Ocean is ".. the Southwestern limit of the Greenland Sea", which seems clear to me. If they indeed treat the Greenland Sea as belonging to both oceans then other sources should reflect this, which I haven't seen, i.e. they speak of one ocean. Materialscientist (talk) 00:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but note their southern limit of the Arctic Ocean, ...Between Greenland and West Spitzbergen [sic] — The Northern limit of Greenland Sea. They simply do not say which ocean the sea is part of. Pfly (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems they (I mean major bodies) prefer to be obscure :-). Before I run away too, I've looked at the UN oceans site. It is rather complex to navigate, but seems like Arctic. Materialscientist (talk) 01:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I found a few more sources. One book, published by Cambridge University Press, describes definitions of "the Arctic Ocean and its various seas" as "somewhat imprecise and/or arbitrary". Then compares "Russian sources" with "general usage" on the particular points of Greenland Sea, Bering Sea, Labrador Sea, and Baffin Bay. Another by Cambridge University Press defines Greenland Sea as part of the Atlantic. I also discovered the "European Marine Gazetteer", apparently based on the IHO's definitions. It has Greenland Sea as part of the Arctic Ocean--along with the Norwegian Sea, Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, and others. There also seem to be many scholarly papers by oceanographers, climatologists, and the like, which use the term "Nordic Seas" for the whole region between Greenland and Norway. They seem to describe the Nordic Seas as "between" the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, not exactly part of one or the other. Then again, papers about the Nordic Seas seem to frequently describe the Arctic Ocean itself as a marginal sea of the Atlantic, usually with the term "Arctic Mediterranean Sea". Anyway, I'll see if I can do something with this info... Pfly (talk) 07:36, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

If so, I myself wouldn't waste time on this and would spend it on expanding more vital information. To clarify, we have had quite a number of such situations at WP:CHEMS and the solutions were (i) follow a major authority (IUPAC in our case), if their choice is widely accepted, and ignore those who don't accept IUPAC. (ii) If most scientific community ignores that choice (this happens too) than ignore that "governing" body and keep WP conventions set by the project. Materialscientist (talk) 07:52, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Good points, thanks. Sadly, I'm highly skilled at wasting time on Wikipedia. ;-) Pfly (talk) 22:10, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

First sentence a little confusing

Does anyone else find the first sentence a little confusing? I read "Borders Greenland to the west and the Svalbard peninsula to the est" as 'bordering on the west coast of Greenland and east of the peninsula' but perhaps this the accepted use of 'bordering'. Jerry (talk) 10:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Are these temperatures backward?

In the #Hydrology, climate and ice section, a sentence says: "The summer is very short, as the number of days per year when the temperature rises above 0 °C varies between 225 on the south to 334 in the north." Isn't the number of warm days supposed to be bigger in the south? Other numbers seem to show that the south side has a warmer climate. Daß Wölf 23:22, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and reversed them. Feel free to revert me if I was mistaken. Daß Wölf 15:56, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

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