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Polar View services are offered in the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as mid-latitude areas with significant snow and ice across Europe, The Baltic Sea region, Canada and the North Atlantic. Satellite images are captured in the regions depicted below and used to provide detailed ice and snow maps/charts to assist with effective planning and decision making.
Our service portfolio is managed by a regional structure with nodes in the European Arctic, Baltic Sea, North American Arctic, and Antarctic. Detail on services offered in each of these regions follows below. Data and models indicate that the European Arctic ice cover is changing and the summer ice will be greatly reduced in this century. This will have significant impact on the environment and human activities. In this regard, oil and gas exploration as well as marine transportation and ship traffic in the Arctic and surrounding seas will require significant improvements in ice services. Polar View, in the European Arctic, provides enhanced monitoring of hemispheric sea ice extent and variability in support of climate research and modelling. It also delivers specific monitoring services to secure safe and cost effective marine operations as well as sea ice information in support of environment management and risk assessment. Further details of these services are provided below:
Detailed information about Polar View services in the European Arctic can be obtained from polarview.met.no or Helge Tangen at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute at helge.tangen@polarview.org. Timely and variable information on sea ice conditions are essential for all operations in ice-covered areas. The safety and efficiency of sea transportation, off-shore operations, fisheries and other activities in regions covered by sea ice have been the motive for establishing operational sea ice monitoring and forecasting services in many countries. The Baltic Sea freezes annually, and ice season lasts from several weeks up to seven months. Annual marine transportation is about 700 million tons. 40% of that is transported in winter months. It has the largest marine transportation in the Word's ice covered seas. At any given time there are more than 2000 large vessels sailing in the Baltic Sea. During last ten years the marine traffic has increased by 34%, and the trend is expected to continue. In the same period, however, the number of icebreakers has not increased. The smoothness of traffic has been possible due to by better ice monitoring, where use of satellite data has become more and more important. Although national ice services are providing ice information on daily basis, there is a need for high-resolution ice information and ice forecasts. Polar View, in the Baltic Sea region, provides both ice thickness charts (in near ship resolution) and ice forecasts, including ice drift, ridging, thickness, and compression details. Forecast information is available for a range of time lines from hourly to daily. Further details of these services are provided below:
Detailed information about Polar View services in the Baltic Sea can be obtained from polarview.fimr.fi and www.smhi.se/polarview or by contacting Ari Seina at the Finnish Institute of Marine Research at ari.seina@polarview.org. Detailed information about Polar View services in the North American Arctic can be obtained by contacting Thomas Puestow at C-CORE at thomas.puestow@polarview.org or Des Power at C-CORE at des.power@polarview.org. Antarctic waters continue to attract increasing numbers of shipping operators. Vessels from national science programmes, tour ship companies, fisheries and other sectors, need timely sea ice information to allow them to work safely and efficiently. There is a need for a single source of timely information at an appropriate resolution which is unaffected by cloud cover. Polar View, in the Antarctic, will provide both daily large-area data for planning and targeted high-resolution data for more detailed sea ice navigation. Further details of these services are provided below:
Detailed information about Polar View services in the Antarctic can be obtained from www.polarview.aq or Andrew Fleming at the British Antarctic Survey at andrew.fleming@polarview.org. |
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