Barents Sea the Norwegian Sea to the west, and the archipelagos of Svalbard to the northwest, Franz Josef Land to the northeast and Novaya Zemlya to the east. The islands of Novaya Zemlya, an extension of the northern end of the Ural Mountains, separate the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea. Despite being part of the Arctic Ocean, the Barents Sea has been characterized as "turning into the Atlantic" because of its status as "the Arctic warming hot spot." Hydrologic changes due to global warming have led to a reduction in sea ice and in stratification of the water column, which could
Severnaya Zemlya as Arctic lemming, which is present on all of the large islands and, in some places has been recorded to reach a density of 500 per km (1,300 per sq mi). The Arctic fox ("Alopex lagopus") has been known to den on the islands, with several hundred observed in the 1980s. Other mammals occasionally observed include the wolf ("Canis lupus"), the polar bear ("Ursus maritimus"), ermine ("Mustela erminea"), Arctic hare ("Lepus timidus"), and reindeer ("Rangifer tarandus"). The discovery of Severnaya Zemlya is the subject of Veniamin Kaverin's novel "The Two Captains" as well as its stage adaptation, "Nord-Ost". Severnaya Zemlya