Author(s): Miao Yu; Peng Lu; Zhijun Li; Zhiyuan Li; Xiaodong Chen
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Arctic navigation; Sea ice concentration; Ice thickness
Abstract: With the change of global climate, sea ice conditions in the Arctic have changed significantly in the past decades, which brings opportunities for Arctic navigation and resource exploitation. In the present study, four different parts of the Arctic Northeast Passage (NEP) were selected as the research targets, two of them were routes from Sabetta port of Yamal Peninsula to the direction of Europe, and the others were to the direction of Asia. Seasonal and spatial changes of sea ice conditions and navigable period (NP) in the past decade were analyzed using multisource remote sensing data. Results of sea ice concentration (SIC) reveal that ice conditions of two Asian routes were more severe than the European routes, and the annual mean SIC was ~0.62 for the former and 0.2~0.3 for the latter, respectively. NP analyses indicate that the mean open days of two European routes were almost same, from mid-July to mid-October, lasting about 125 days for a threshold of SIC<0.7 and 110 days for a threshold of SIC<0.3. Concurrently, Asian routes only lasted for 78 days (SIC<0.7) and 64 days (SIC<0.3), from mid-August to mid-October. Results of ice thickness show that the mean value of two European routes was almost the same too, about open water in October and 1.16m in April. Thicker ice appears in the two Asian routes, achieving 0.3m and 0.54m in October, 1.2m and 1.55m in April, respectively.
Year: 2020