Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions.
The continuing decline in Arctic sea-ice will likely lead to increased human activity and opportunities for shipping in the region, suggesting that seasonal predictions of route openings will become ever more important. Here we present results from a set of 'perfect model' experiments to a...
Main Authors: | , , , |
---|---|
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
UNESCO/IOC
2017
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.25607/obp-896 https://repository.oceanbestpractices.org/handle/11329/1390 |
id |
ftdatacite:10.25607/obp-896 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftdatacite:10.25607/obp-896 2023-05-15T14:36:26+02:00 Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions. Melia, Nathanael Haines, Keith Hawkins, Ed Day, Jonathan J. 2017 11pp. https://dx.doi.org/10.25607/obp-896 https://repository.oceanbestpractices.org/handle/11329/1390 en eng UNESCO/IOC Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Attribution 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode cc-by-3.0 CC-BY Arctic shipping Other CreativeWork article Journal Contribution 2017 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.25607/obp-896 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z The continuing decline in Arctic sea-ice will likely lead to increased human activity and opportunities for shipping in the region, suggesting that seasonal predictions of route openings will become ever more important. Here we present results from a set of 'perfect model' experiments to assess the predictability characteristics of the opening of Arctic sea routes. We find skilful predictions of the upcoming summer shipping season can be made from as early as January, although typically forecasts show lower skill before a May 'predictability barrier'. We demonstrate that in forecasts started from January, predictions of route opening date are twice as uncertain as predicting the closing date and that the Arctic shipping season is becoming longer due to climate change, with later closing dates mostly responsible. We find that predictive skill is state dependent with predictions for high or low ice years exhibiting greater skill than medium ice years. Forecasting the fastest open water route through the Arctic is accurate to within 200 km when predicted from July, a six-fold increase in accuracy compared to forecasts initialised from the previous November, which are typically no better than climatology. Finally we find that initialisation of accurate summer sea-ice thickness information is crucial to obtain skilful forecasts, further motivating investment into sea-ice thickness observations, climate models, and assimilation systems. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Climate change Sea ice DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Arctic |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
Arctic shipping |
spellingShingle |
Arctic shipping Melia, Nathanael Haines, Keith Hawkins, Ed Day, Jonathan J. Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions. |
topic_facet |
Arctic shipping |
description |
The continuing decline in Arctic sea-ice will likely lead to increased human activity and opportunities for shipping in the region, suggesting that seasonal predictions of route openings will become ever more important. Here we present results from a set of 'perfect model' experiments to assess the predictability characteristics of the opening of Arctic sea routes. We find skilful predictions of the upcoming summer shipping season can be made from as early as January, although typically forecasts show lower skill before a May 'predictability barrier'. We demonstrate that in forecasts started from January, predictions of route opening date are twice as uncertain as predicting the closing date and that the Arctic shipping season is becoming longer due to climate change, with later closing dates mostly responsible. We find that predictive skill is state dependent with predictions for high or low ice years exhibiting greater skill than medium ice years. Forecasting the fastest open water route through the Arctic is accurate to within 200 km when predicted from July, a six-fold increase in accuracy compared to forecasts initialised from the previous November, which are typically no better than climatology. Finally we find that initialisation of accurate summer sea-ice thickness information is crucial to obtain skilful forecasts, further motivating investment into sea-ice thickness observations, climate models, and assimilation systems. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Melia, Nathanael Haines, Keith Hawkins, Ed Day, Jonathan J. |
author_facet |
Melia, Nathanael Haines, Keith Hawkins, Ed Day, Jonathan J. |
author_sort |
Melia, Nathanael |
title |
Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions. |
title_short |
Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions. |
title_full |
Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions. |
title_fullStr |
Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions. |
title_full_unstemmed |
Towards seasonal Arctic shipping route predictions. |
title_sort |
towards seasonal arctic shipping route predictions. |
publisher |
UNESCO/IOC |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.25607/obp-896 https://repository.oceanbestpractices.org/handle/11329/1390 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Climate change Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change Sea ice |
op_rights |
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Attribution 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode cc-by-3.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.25607/obp-896 |
_version_ |
1766309052807118848 |