Arctic climate changes and possible conditions of Arctic navigation in the 21st century

Abstract

Assessments of current and expected climatic changes in the Arctic Basin are obtained, including ice-cover characteristics influencing the duration of the navigation season on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) along Eurasia and the Northwest Passage (NWP) along North America. The ability of modern climate models to simulate the average duration of the navigation season and its changes over recent decades is estimated. The duration of the navigation season for the NSR and NWP in the 21st century is estimated using an ensemble of climate models. The assessments differ significantly for the NSR and NWP. Unlike the NSR, the NWP reveals no large changes in the navigation season in the first 30 years of the 21st century. From the multimodel simulations, the expected duration of the navigation period by the late 21st century will be approximately 3 to 6 months for the NSR and 2 to 4 months for the NWP under the moderate anthropogenic SRES-A1B scenario.