The recent retreat of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is one of the most significant environmental issues. On the other hand, it also increases the possibility of commercial use of the Arctic Ocean as a new shipping route. Upon such circumstances, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan commenced comprehensive 5-year research program on the Arctic climate system and its global influence. The program contains 9 research projects including a study on the sea ice prediction and construction of an ice navigation system. This study covers ice prediction, ice monitoring, ship-ice interaction, ship icing, navigation scenario and economic evaluation. This paper describes the overview of this research project, and some details on the progress of sea ice prediction method. One method is to estimate the summer sea ice distribution from the preceding winter ice motion which can be obtained by analyzing satellite remote sensing data. The other is numerical computation using ice-ocean coupled model. The study is still progressing but the satisfactory results have been obtained so far.
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