Winter shipping in the Canadian Arctic : toward year-round traffic?

• Published in: Polar Geography
• Main Authors: Ducos, Pascale Laurence, Lasserre, Frédéric
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: V.H. Winston and Son : Distributed by Bellwether Pub. 2016
• Subjects: Arctic; Shipping; Sea ice; Northwest Passage; Ice class; Ice dymanics; Arctique > Aspect stratégique; Routes commerciales; Réchauffement de la Terre; Navigation dans les glaces; Glace de mer; Nord-Ouest; Passage du > Navigation; Nord-Est; Dégel; Nunavut; Arctique*; Northwest passage
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/792; https://doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2015.1006298

With the rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic, and developing shipping traffic, emerged the idea, popular with the media, that sea ice would soon be completely dominated by first-year ice, and would thus be comparable to ice present in the Gulf of St. Lawrence: this would allow for the setting up of shipping year-round along Arctic passages. In fact, contrary to this idea, even with the vanishing of multi-year ice, ice conditions will remain very different in the Arctic from ice prevailing in the Gulf. Besides, naval technology certainly helps overcoming challenges of ice navigation, but they do not mean it is economically or technically much easier. Year-round shipping in the Arctic remains a difficult challenge to overcome.