Barents Sea

The numbers

• 1,378,000km²Area, measured532,000 mi² · Natural Earth outline
• 1,424,000km²Area, publishedWikidata · 3.3% above our measure
• 600mGreatest depthWikidata

The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%.

What the numbers say about the Barents Sea

• The Arabian Sea, the largest of the 42 seas ranked on sizeversus, is 3.00× the size of the Barents Sea; the Barents Sea ranks 7th.
• The Barents Sea sits between the Sea of Okhotsk (1,459,000 km²) and the Greenland Sea (1,183,000 km²) in the ranking.
• Counted as a country, the Barents Sea would be larger than 193 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 20th by area, between Mongolia (1,565,000 km²) and Peru (1,290,000 km²).
• It is larger than 50 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Texas, 685,000 km²) and smaller than 1.
• It is larger than 30 of the 31 provinces and regions of China (the biggest of them is Inner Mongolia, 1,144,000 km²) and smaller than 1.
• The closest US state is Alaska (1,505,000 km²): the Barents Sea is 92% of the size of Alaska.
• Wikidata records a greatest depth of 600 m.
• On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 75°N is drawn about 14.5× too large in area, so the Barents Sea looks bigger there than it is.
• Laid out flat, the Barents Sea stretches about 1,710 km north to south and 1,360 km east to west.
• Our measured 1,378,000 km² is 3.3% below Wikidata’s published figure of 1,424,000 km². Published areas of lakes and seas move with the water level and with what is counted, so a few percent is expected.

About the same size as

On the shore

• Russia
• Norway

Natural Earth’s outlines of Russia and Norway lie within 25 km of the outline of the Barents Sea. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.

Compare the Barents Sea

• Barents Sea vs Peru
• Alaska vs Barents Sea