NNA Track 1: Arctic impacts and reverberations of expanding global maritime trade routes
The Arctic Expansion Reverberations Website is hosted by Elise Miller-Hooks, Sara Cobb, Celso Ferreira, Thomas Ravens, Anne Garland, Jinlun Zhang and Ralph Pundt, researchers working on the U.S. National Science Foundation funded project, NNA Track 1: Arctic impacts and reverberations of expanding global maritime trade routes. The site is intended to provide resources and research outcomes that may be of use to others investigating related topics.
Latest News:
Cool Lessons from Utqiaġvik, Alaska
Elise Miller-Hooks
analyzes permafrost
in Utqiaġvik.
August 23, 2023 / By Martha Bushong
This summer, computer modeling and the Arctic ecosystem converged at the top of the world. Professor Elise Miller-Hooks and a team of National Science Foundation (NSF) researchers convened at the Barrow Arctic Research Center. These NSF Navigating the New Arctic researchers traveled to the remote location to attend the Permafrost and Infrastructure Symposium in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, some 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
The symposium brought together scientists, regional planners, village leaders, project managers, and federal and local policy makers. The team attended to learn and grow their research–and to share. Miller-Hooks described what she learned as massive.
"It was nothing like I expected. When I entered Utqiaġvik, I found myself in a tough environment with mostly dirt roads. The other researchers told me these roadways are built on permafrost,” she said. “Later on, they convinced me to lower myself into a cave underground to see 16,000-year-old permafrost.” View Full article here
Studying the Potential for Changing Global Seaborne Trade Flows as a Consequence of a Thawing Arctic Ocean
By: Elise Miller-Hooks, George Mason University; Sara Cobb, George Mason University; Celso Ferreira, George Mason University; Anne Garland, ARIES; Ralph Pundt, Maine Maritime Academy; Thomas Ravens, Consultant; and Jinlun Zhang, University of Washington
A changing climate has brought a thawing of the Arctic Ocean with increasingly viable passageways. This opening of the Arctic routes over coming years is likely to lead to a shift in the flow of cargo across world seaborne trade lanes. Our project, "NNA Track 1: Arctic impacts and reverberations of expanding global maritime trade routes," funded by the US National Science Foundation, is developing the science to make high-fidelity and high-resolution, but long-term, future forecasts of conditions along these passageways including: waves, storm surge, extreme cold, wind, visibility, risk of icing to vessels, as well as sea-ice conditions, including ice concentration, ice thickness and fractions of thin and thick ice. With these predictions we can estimate route characteristics, such as voyage duration and risk of accident for cargo vessels, characterize route shortcomings, and predict vessel flows both globally and through the region. Estimates of coastal permafrost thaw simultaneously can support the teams' work in understanding how to construct or maintain port infrastructure on a thawing permafrost foundation.