The Yugorsky Peninsula is a large peninsula in Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Nenets Autonomous Okrug is a federal subject of Russia .It has an area of 176,700 km2 and population of 42,628 as of the preliminary results of the 2010 Census , 21,296 of whom live in Naryan-Mar, the administrative center.-Geography and ecology:The arctic ecology of this...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. It is limited by the Khaypudyr Bay

Khaypudyr Bay

Khaypudyr Bay or Khaypudyrskaya Bay is a gulf in Russia, located in the Pechora Sea between the coastline of the Yugorsky Peninsula and the lowlands and marshy areas in the mainland south of Dolgiy Island. Its latitude is 68° 30' N and the longitude 59° 30' E.The Khaypudyr Bay has a smaller bay...

 in the Pechora Sea

Pechora Sea

Pechora Sea , is a sea at the northwest of Russia, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea. The western border of the sea is off Kolguyev Island, while the eastern border is the western coasts of Vaygach Island and the Yugorsky Peninsula, and the northern border the southern end of Novaya...

 to the west and by the Baydaratsk Bay

Baydaratskaya Bay

Baydaratskaya Bay is a gulf in Russia, located in the southern part of the Kara Sea between the coastline of the Northern termination of the Ural Mountains and Yamal Peninsula. The length of the gulf is approx. 180 km, mouth width - 78 km, depth - up to 20 m. Surface water temperature...

 in the Kara Sea

Kara Sea

The Kara Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya....

 to the north and east.
Latitude : 68° 40' Longitude : 62° 15'

Compared to the Barents Sea

Barents Sea

The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of Norway and Russia. Known in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea, the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barents...

, which receives relatively warm currents from the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

, the Kara Sea is much colder, remaining frozen for over nine months a year. Thus often, in the spring and in the fall, the eastern coast of the Yugorsky Peninsula is frozen, while its western coast is clear of ice.

The Yugorsky Strait

Yugorsky Strait

The Yugorsky Strait is a narrow sound between the Kara Sea and the Pechora Sea. Its maximum width is 10 km and its minimum width only 3 km...

 and, beyond it, Vaygach Island

Vaygach Island

Vaygach Island is an island in the Arctic Sea between the Pechora Sea and the Kara Sea.Vaygach Island is separated from the Yugorsky Peninsula in the mainland by the Yugorsky Strait and from Novaya Zemlya by the Kara Strait...

 lie at the northwestern end of this peninsula.

In the southeastern end of the Yugorsky Peninsula lies the Kara Meteorite Crater

Kara crater

Kara is a meteor crater in the Yugorsky Peninsula, Nenetsia, Russia.It is 65 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 70.3 ± 2.2 million years old . Impactite outcrops located on the Baydarata Gulf shore north-east of the crater imply that the original size of the crater, now greatly...

, while the Ust-Kara site lies offshore, 15 km east of the small Kara or Karskaya Guba inlet. It was formerly believed that these two sites were two separate craters and that they formed a twin impact structure from a large-scale meteorite hit in the late cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...

. However, it seems that the Ust-Kara site does not exist as a separate site. Apparently, the Suevite

Impactite

Impactite is an informal term describing a rock created or modified by the impact of a meteorite. The term encompasses shock-metamorphosed target rocks, melts and mixtures of the two, as well as sedimentary rocks with significant impact-derived components .-Some localities:*Nördlinger Ries...

outcrops of the Ust-Kara impact structure are only a part of the Kara impact structure. (Hodge 1994 and NASA 1988)

External links

• Permafrost: http://nsidc.org/data/ggd189_ggd.html
• Ground ice: http://www.hi.is/~oi/PDF%20reprints/Ingolfsson%20&%20Lokrantz.pdf
• Kara and Ust-Kara impact structures: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2002/pdf/1480.pdf, http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/planets/impact3.htm & http://www.somerikko.net/old/geo/imp/refer.htm