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The Arctic Ocean receives a large amount of fresh water from river runoff relative to its area, compared to other oceans. There are five major rivers that flow into the Arctic, the Mackenzie and Yukon in North America, and the three largest in Asia, the Ob, Yenisey and Lena Rivers. The Ob and Yenisey Rivers show an increase since the 1980s. Discharge from the six largest Asian rivers has increased by 7% from 1936 to 1999. [Peterson, et. al., 2002, Science].

Annual runoff of Lena, Ob and Yenisey Rivers. Data from the ArcticRIMS database and R-ArcticNET database. .

Arctic river basins. Click to see a larger image. The thickness of the blue lines represents the relative river discharge, with the thickest lines indicating the rivers with the largest volume. The numbers on the map are the discharge in cubic kilometers per year. Map is from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Report.

Find more information (references and websites):

• A Regional Integrated Hydrological Monitoring System for the Pan-Arctic Land Mass, including relevance to the larger Earth System, from ArcticRIMS at the University of New Hampshire.
• The Science of Global Hydrology from the Water Systems Analysis Group at the University of New Hampshire.