Weddell Sea

Also known as George IV Sea

part of the Southern Ocean between Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula

AI overview

The Weddell Sea is a body of water in the Southern Ocean located between Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. It is an important region for understanding Antarctic geography and oceanography.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of: marginal sea
Part of: Southern Ocean
Named after: James Weddell
Continent: Antarctica
Area: 2800000
Image: NASA's DC-8 Flying Over the Weddell Sea.jpg

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topic's main category: Category:Weddell Sea
Commons category: Weddell Sea
vertical depth: 6820
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4

Sources (2)

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Encyclopedic overview

The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha Coast, Queen Maud Land. To the east of Cape Norvegia is the King Haakon VII Sea. Much of the southern part of the sea is covered by a permanent, massive ice shelf field, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.

The sea is contained within the two overlapping Antarctic territorial claims of Argentine Antarctica, the British Antarctic Territory, and also resides partially within the Antarctic Chilean Territory. At its widest the sea is around 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) across, and its area is around 2.8 million square kilometres (1.1×10^ sq mi).

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Weddell Sea” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.