World Ocean Atlas, Vol. 3: The Arctic Ocean; The Times Atlas of the Oceans

The review examines volume 3, The Arctic Ocean, of the Soviet World Ocean Atlas, praising its printing, shaded relief and detailed quantitative maps. It describes coverage of seafloor relief and structure, climate, ocean-water properties, organisms, ice, auroras and magnetism. The reviewer judges the historical maps a full and fair account of exploration, while noting that history occupies less than a tenth of the volume. Monthly maps of floating-ice probabilities are singled out as useful to the naval and merchant officers identified as the intended users. The reviewer considers the volume essential for Arctic reference libraries and particularly current because of the importance of Soviet physical data for the region. Reservations concern accessibility and price: the atlas is almost entirely in Russian, and the reviewer criticizes Pergamon’s $400 price, described as a 1,200 percent markup over the printed 1980 domestic price of 25 rubles. At that price, the English translations of section introductions and the index should, in the reviewer’s view, have been bound into the atlas instead of supplied as a separate pamphlet.