Open Polar Sea
The theory of the ice-free Arctic Ocean in the 19th century was a popular, of the same towards the end clearly refuted theory, which said that around the North Pole should be an ice-free, navigable zone exist.
The origins of the theory dates back to the 16th century on Robert Thorne († 1527). Also Willem Barents and Henry Hudson based their expeditions to the discovery of the Northwest Passage on this theory.
Once up to the middle of the 19th century more and more polar explorers were trapped on their expeditions to the north in the thick ice of the Arctic Ocean and even those posed an insurmountable barrier for the former ships, they became almost forgotten, before the researchers Elisha Kent Kane, Isaac Israel Hayes and George W. DeLong had advanced in their expeditions beyond the 80th northern latitude and with their reports, ice-free zones to have discovered (known as polynyas today ), the researchers could sit up their time.
Kane and Hayes argued that because the ice floes wandered through the drift to the south, near the pole, therefore, an ice-free zone must exist. The entrance to these navigable area of the Arctic Ocean they suspected about the Kennedy Channel, later. Due to the Robeson channel, both parts of the Nares Strait, which separates Ellesmere Island from Greenland and Baffin Bay with the Lincolnsee in the Arctic Ocean connects
Matvei Gedenstrom suspected the driveway, however, in the north of Siberia and based this theory on his expedition with Yakov Sannikov. The two were encountered in 1808-1810 mapping of the New Siberian Islands to large polynyas. Furthermore, it described " Sannikov Land", an unknown land mass north of the Kotelnyinsel, which was allegedly discovered by the two, but does not exist as ice.
Further arguments for the theory yielded among other things, now also proven to be false theory that sea ice represents only country in regions near, but not on the open sea. In the vicinity of the pole, since no country was suspected, this area would have to be ice-free.
The scientist Matthew Fontaine Maury and August Petermann, which dealt in the 19th century with the ocean currents, argued that warm currents to the north, such as the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio of, would rise under the surface and the poleis would take to melt. Also, temperature measurements showed that around the 80th parallel, the lowest temperatures were measured, which were sought to base the decision by the observations of animal migration, as these north wandered what the scientists had expected a less hostile space beyond the 80th parallel. Ultimately, you also believed that the everlasting sun (midnight sun) would cause the polar ice to melt during the Arctic summer.
When the expeditions of Kane, Hayes and DeLong failed to prove the theory, the belief waned in the theory of the ice-free Arctic Ocean. George Nares, who succeeded the first, the Naresstraße, suspected entrance to the ice-free zone, to navigate to the Lincolnsee, refuted the theory for the first time clearly, because he found nothing but more ice. The theory was disproved final finally of Fridtjof Nansen and Otto Sverdrup, which drifted with the Fram 1893-1896 by the Arctic Ocean.
With regard to the North East Passage of the Austro-Hungarian Nordpolexpedtion by Julius Payer and Carl Weyprecht succeeded in 1874 evidence to the contrary, as they on the Franz Josef Land, the northernmost point of Eurasia reached with Cape Fligely, but nothing vorfanden as sea ice.
Although the theory has ultimately proven to be false, it has nevertheless contributed significantly to the exploration of the Arctic, as suggested by the relatively simple way to conquer through an ice-free zone the pole by ship, numerous expeditions were equipped in the 19th century.
Today, the theory undergoes under different circumstances a scientific revival, it is expected because of global warming so that in the summer months large areas of polar ice could melt.
After a record year in 2007, a year on average to warm, it came in 2008 a research vessel to circumnavigate the North Pole. The remaining ice could be broken under its own power. Also in the summer of 2011, both Northwest as well as the Northeast Passage was navigable.