Research and higher education related to sea ice, environment, climate change, and operational conditions in the Arctic Ocean focusing on the Northern Sea Route.
The Arctic Ocean has obtained increased international attention due to changing sea ice conditions facilitating the accessibility, as well as the exploitation of its natural resources (minerals, fisheries), energy (oil, gas), and new sailing routes that are creating new challenges and opportunities. Although transportation into, within and/or through the Arctic waters has been on the agenda for several decades, the Arctic is not yet an arena for large-scale international marine transportation.
The project is devoted to improvement of lead fraction retrievals in the Arctic from satellites. These will then be used to study processes such as heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere and brine rejection during the ice formation.
Participants: N. Ivanova, P. Rampal, S. Bouillon, E. Ólason (NERSC), I. Fer, L.H Smedsrud (GFI), and M. Ilicak (Uni-Research)
SONARC is a NORRUSS project contributing to research cooperation between Norway and Russia with focus on satellite technology for safe navigation and maritime operations in the Arctic. SONARC was running from April 2015 to November 2018
The main objective of SONARC is to develop a sea ice monitoring and forecasting system to support safe operations and navigation in Arctic Seas. SONARC has exploited Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from satellites as a major component of this system. From 2015 Sentinel-1 has been the main provider of SAR data, deliverig data every day in near realtime for monitoring of sea ice and other environmental parameters.
Arctic sea ice area (upper) an ice extent (lower) during the years 2007 to 2012 per 25th August, 2012 as reported at the Nansen Center’s European ice information service. Source: Nansen Center/ www.arctic-roos.org.A record minimum sea ice area in the Arctic is observed now in August 2012 and the ice is still melting rapidly.
(Reuters) - The area of ice in the Arctic Ocean has thawed to a record low, surpassing the previous 2007 minimum in a sign of climate change transforming the region, according to some scientific estimates.
