Melting ice masses in the Arctic have actually provided some advantages for the Arctic countries. Namely, Russia has benefited from requiring less icebreaker capacity to navigate the Northern Sea Route.

It is widely believed that ice thawing makes navigation easier and less demanding from a technological standpoint, but new research on the Canadian Northwest Passage suggests otherwise.

Alison Cook, the author of the article, admits that while ice does indeed retreat in the Arctic sea, "it's not a simple story." The distinctive feature of her article is that it is based on shipping experiences rather than the more common modelling approaches.

One of the key ideas presented in the article is that thawing younger ice releases thicker ice, which subsequently creates choke points on shipping routes. This thicker ice results in hazardous spots that can render the routes unviable for navigation.

In other words, while melting ice does increase passability, it effectively decreases the period during which ships can traverse the sea safely.

The diagrams illustrate that the length of the shipping season for PC7 class icebreaker vessels has been decreasing, with recent years highlighted in pink.

It is also worth noting that there has been an increase in the length of the shipping season in previous years. This observation suggests that the thawing-release situation is localized and requires further research in different regions of the world.

So, in response to the question posed in the title, melting ice does ease navigation, but not entirely. While passability certainly increases, the duration of risk-free navigation is becoming shorter.

The dream of navigating the North without icebreakers remains just that—a dream (and a precarious one at that, as it would signify an ecological catastrophe). Otherwise, there wouldn’t be such high interest in building icebreakers and polar research vessels in the US, Canada, China, and India.

The Editorial Board of the Arctic Century

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