Abstract

INI Programme Mathematics of sea ice phenomena: SIPW03 (Ice-structures interactions) Safer operations in ice-covered oceans: The tale of the two projects Yevgeny Aksenov(1), Stefanie Rynders(1), Danny Feltham(2), Lucia Hosekova(2), Robert Marsh(3), Nicolaus Skrilis(3), Laurent Bertino(4) and Tim Williams(4) (1)National Oceanography Centre, UK (2)University of Reading, UK (3)University of Southampton, UK (4)Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC), Norway Contact: yka@noc.ac.uk Increase in the Arctic offshore operations is driven easing of sea ice conditions and improving accessibility of the shipping routes. We present a review of the two projects, focus on the offshore and navigational safety in the high-latitude oceans. The projects develop analysis and forecasting technologies to provide key information for the maritime operations and marine information services. The projects bring together physical oceanography and the mathematics of fluid structure interaction and address the likely extreme loads on a selection of structures and ships, in a wide range of offshore environments, including pack ice areas and Marginal Ice Zones. The innovative capability develop in the project helps the integrated hindcasts and forecasts of ocean currents, tides and waves. We detail the data requirements and discuss existing and emerging datasets on ice thickness, ice drift and ice fragmentation and data on waves, tides, currents and icebergs). The study makes the assessment of the current and future states of the Arctic shipping, including, trans-Arctic navigation, regional Arctic shipping of commodities and transportation of Arctic natural resources. The approach uses sea ice drift, concentration and thickness fields from high-resolution model future projections in conjunction with the climate scenarios. For the study we acknowledge support from the EU FP7 Project ‘Ships and waves reaching Polar Regions (SWARP)’ and from the NERC UK Innovation Grant 'Safer Operations at Sea – Supported by Operational Simulations (SOS-SOS)'.