Research On The Navigability Of The Arctic Northeast Passage Based On Sea Ice Conditions

Covered by ice sheet all the year around,the Arctic is extremely cold and harsh,which makes the normal navigation impossible.In recent years,with the Arctic region affected by global environmental changes,the ice has gradually been melting,which from the objective point of view provides an opportunity for the Arctic sea merchants to navigate through the Arctic passage.Compared to the traditional Suez Canal route,the Arctic North East Passage has many advantages,with a length shortened by 30%and no threats from Somali pirates and Indian Ocean pirates.Sea ice is a key factor affecting the navigation of the Arctic North East Passage.With the further opening of the Arctic North East Passage,the commercial activities of the Arctic North East Passage are becoming more and more frequent.Improving the analysis of the ice conditions in the Arctic North East Passage can not only strengthen the safety of navigation,but also maximize the interests of shipping.The analysis uses the sea ice concentration products of The University of Bremen in Germany during the period between 2006 and 2015,and takes the route of "Yong Sheng" ship as an example to extract the sea ice regime of the Arctic North East Passage,including route navigational window,spatial distribution of daily sea ice concentration and month standard deviation of Sea ice concentration.Judging from the ice regime,the author gets to know the basic conditions of the route navigational window from 2006 to 2015,the general navigation condition and the main locations of ice barriers from 2006 to 2015,and the fluctuation of the sea ice concentration of waters,through which the route went from July to October.Through the analysis of the ice regime along the route,the key areas that affect the Arctic North East Passage have been discovered,including the area from middle East Siberian Sea westward along the route to the eastern part of the New Siberian Islands(defined as A segment);the area from the central part of the Laptev Sea(120° E)westward along the route through the Vilkitskogo Strait,to the Sergey Kirov Islands waters(defined as B segment).B segment plays a decisive role in the navigability of the route.In the analysis,Sen's slop+Mann-Kendall method is used to analyze the changing trend of the route navigational window of "Yong Sheng" route and the key areas.The results shows that the actual lengths of the navigable periods of the "Yong Sheng" A and B witnessed an upward trend.Both of them passed a significance test at the 95%confidence level,indicating that the periods were extended significantly.After analyzing the ice regime of the "Yong Sheng" route,the authors finds that the results can serve as effective evidence to present the real navigation conditions of the North East Passage and to prove its feasibility.This paper has provided a new of way of thinking and methods to research the navigation conditions of the Arctic North East Passage.