Scholarly record

LIQUID GAS TRAFFIC IN THE ARCTIC UNDER CLIMATE WARMING

Victor Tretyakov

Abstract

The paper is devoted to a research of ice cover parameters intra- and inter-annual variability along a section of the Northern Sea Throughway due to the global warming. The standard sailing route is situated between the Sabetta seaport (the Yamal Peninsula, Russia) and North Cape (Norway). The natural gas liquefaction plant in the Sabetta City is one of the largest ones in the world, and the liquefied gas producing is increasing. Now there is an imperative need to provide hydrocarbons marine transportation from oil and gas fields within Northern Russia and Russian Arctic Seas up to Europe, USA, Japan and other countries of Eastern Asia. Therefore, there are a few problems: determination of risk value of the marine transport system for long-term period of its exploitation, operational information supply for the navigation, showing up of existence or non-existence of expressed trend of ice conditions along the Northern Sea Throughway. The main reason of the risk is a possible tanker or liquefied gas carrier nip by compact floating ice in the Arctic Ocean. Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) has unique collection of vectored ice charts for the last decades. The charts were produced by processing of Earth's remote sensing data. The ice data may be used for receiving information for solution of the above-mentioned problems and for increase of navigation safety along the Northern Sea Throughway. Designed methodology of the ice charts processing is suggested. The methodology includes usage of set of specially designed programs in the Python for the vectored ice charts processing, and in the Mathcad for statistical analysis. The Python?s programs are used in ArcGIS map documents. The statistical analysis includes usage of the cumulative curves method, and application of the ranked sign tests of Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney and Siegel-Tukey. Some results of the Arctic Ocean ice maps processing for the period from 1997 to 2017 along the route are presented. The results showed improving of the sailing conditions along the route. It coincides with the prevailing opinion about alteration of the Arctic Ocean ice conditions for last decades.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2018/5.2/s20.076

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