Exploitation of trans-Arctic maritime transportation

摘要

Due to global warming, the quantity of Arctic sea ice has been drastically reduced in recent decades, consequently navigating the Arctic is becoming increasingly commercially feasible during part of the year. It will bring huge transportation benefits due to reduction in navigational time, fossil energy consumption and related carbon emissions. In this article, the authors comprehensively assessed the exploitation of trans-Arctic maritime transportation based upon the mining of big data. Because Arctic sea ice prone regions are a significant challenge for charting Arctic routes, state-of-the art remote sensing datasets can provide an accurate and reliable approach to monitoring near real-time large-scale variability of Arctic sea ice conditions. Large-sized datasets of weather/climate modeling can provide a short-term forecast and long-term prediction on changes of Arctic sea ice and related weather/climate conditions, which are indispensable for the exploitation of trans-Arctic maritime transportation. Based on these big data, the authors established the near real-time dynamic optimal trans-Arctic route system to guarantee safe, secure, and efficient trans-Arctic navigation. Such dynamic maps will help the pilots of vessels to maintain safe distances from icebergs and large-size ice floes and to save time, fuel and operational costs and risks. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd.