Which sea lies north of Alaska and Canada's Yukon and Northwest Territories?

Which sea lies north of Alaska and Canada’s Yukon and Northwest Territories? The answer is the Beaufort Sea.

The Beaufort Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, Yukon, and Canada’s Northwest Territories. To its east are parts of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, while the Mackenzie River reaches the sea near Tuktoyaktuk, one of the few permanent settlements on its coast.

It is named for Sir Francis Beaufort, the British hydrographer who devised the Beaufort wind-force scale. The region has a harsh polar climate and is ice-covered for much of the year, although late-summer open water has expanded in recent decades as Arctic sea ice has declined.

The Beaufort Sea is often confused with the Chukchi Sea, which lies west of Alaska, or the Bering Sea, which is farther south between Alaska and Russia. Its location also matters politically: Canada and the United States have an unresolved maritime boundary dispute in a wedge-shaped area offshore between Yukon and Alaska.