Toward Quantifying the Increasing Accessibility of the Arctic Northeast Passage in the Past Four Decades

Sea ice, one of the most dominant barriers to Arctic shipping, has decreased dramatically over the past four decades. Arctic maritime transport is hereupon growing in recent years. To produce a long-term assessment of trans-Arctic accessibility, we systematically revisit the daily Arctic navigabilit...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advances in atmospheric sciences 2023-12, Vol.40 (12), p.2378-2390
Main Authors: Min, Chao, Zhou, Xiangying, Luo, Hao, Yang, Yijun, Wang, Yiguo, Zhang, Jinlun, Yang, Qinghua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accessibility
Atmospheric Sciences
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Geophysics/Geodesy
Ice conditions
Ice cover
Ice thickness
Interdecadal variability
Marine transportation
Meteorology
Original Paper
Sea ice
Sea ice conditions
Sea ice effects
Sea ice thickness
Shipping
Ships
Towards Improving Understanding and Prediction of Arctic Change and its Linkage with Eurasian Mid-latitude Weather and Climate
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Sea ice, one of the most dominant barriers to Arctic shipping, has decreased dramatically over the past four decades. Arctic maritime transport is hereupon growing in recent years. To produce a long-term assessment of trans-Arctic accessibility, we systematically revisit the daily Arctic navigability with a view to the combined effects of sea ice thickness and concentration throughout the period 1979–2020. The general trends of Navigable Windows (NW) in the Northeast Passage show that the number of navigable days is steadily growing and reached 89±16 days for Open Water (OW) ships and 163±19 days for Polar Class 6 (PC6) ships in the 2010s, despite high interannual and interdecadal variability in the NWs. More consecutive NWs have emerged annually for both OW ships and PC6 ships since 2005 because of the faster sea ice retreat. Since the 1980s, the number of simulated Arctic routes has continuously increased, and optimal navigability exists in these years of record-low sea ice extent (e.g., 2012 and 2020). Summertime navigability in the East Siberian and Laptev Seas, on the other hand, varies dramatically due to changing sea ice conditions. This systematic assessment of Arctic navigability provides a reference for better projecting the future trans-Arctic shipping routes.
ISSN:0256-1530
1861-9533
DOI:10.1007/s00376-022-2040-3