Abstract/Summary

The risk posed by Arctic cyclones to ships has seldom been quantified due to the lack of publicly available historical Arctic ship track data. This study investigates Automated Identification System (AIS) transponder derived Arctic ship tracksfrom September 2009 to December 2016. These are analysed with historical synoptic-scale cyclone tracks derived from ERA-5 and reports of past Arctic shipping incidents, to determine the 5 number of ship tracks intersected by intense Arctic cyclones tracks, and how many of these intersections resulted in a reported shipping incident. The number of ships operating in the Arctic has increased year-on-year from 2010 to 2016. The highest density of ships occurs year-round in the Barents Sea. Trans-Arctic shipping transits via theNorthern Sea Route and theNorth-West Passage are limited to summer and autumn months when sea ice extent has sufficiently retreated from the coastlines. Ship track 10 density along these trans-Arctic routes is far less than the thousands of ships travelling in the Barents Sea year-round. Between 2010 and 2016, 158 Arctic shipping incidents were reported, but only 6% of these reported incidents occurred following the passage of an intense Arctic cyclone. Arctic cyclones with significant wave heights greater than 6 metres are found to frequently intersect ships, but only 0.1% of these intersections resulted in a reported shipping incident. Results from this study indicate that ships are frequently impacted by Arctic cyclones, but cyclones have not been a dominant cause of reported Arctic shipping incidents between 2010 and 2016. This suggests that ships are resilient to the rough sea conditions that past Arctic cyclones have caused, therefore mitigating, and reducing risk.