The ice cover in the Greenland and Norwegian seas

The seasonal sea ice cover of the northern North Atlantic is reviewed, comprising the ice of the East Greenland Current, the ice cover around Svalbard, and the ice of the Barents Sea as far east as Franz Josef Land. The review considers various types of ice cover: (1) the fast ice along the coasts and in fjords, including ‘sikussak,’ or very old fast ice of exceptional thickness, (2) the transition zone between the fast ice and the main pack, including the positions and causes of recurring winter polynyas and the nature of the shear zone in NE Greenland, (3) the constitution, dynamics, and seasonal extent of the drifting pack ice, including interannual variations, (4) the processes of air‐ice‐ocean interaction which occur in the marginal ice zone, where the pack ice is influenced by an open ocean boundary.