Voyage Environmental Information System (VEIS) for Safe Navigation Support in the Coastal Waters of the Arctic Ocean

Abstract

The usage of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in the Arctic Ocean has increased much over the years. For the navigation safety in the polar areas, the Polar Code entered into force on January 1, 2017 by International Maritime Organization (IMO). Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology (KIOST) has developed the Arctic Voyage Environmental Information System (VETS) for sea ice, ocean, wave and weather parameters with a 2.5 km grid spacing on a polar stereographic north projection. Satellite-based sea ice concentration (SIC) includes three kinds of products (AL2, A25, and AM1). AL2 is produced over 5 times a day using the dynamic composite technique based on the SIC Level 2 data acquired from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2). The composite (A25) of AL2 and AMSR2 Level 3 data is also generated once a day to serve SIC less than 15%. AM1 is the product of A25 merged with sea ice extent data from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) of 1 km resolution. The short-term prediction data for wave and weather were processed from NCEP, and the data for ocean and sea ice were from Mercator, MetOffice and MetNo through E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information. The model-based short-term SIC products were resealed using the A25 data. The mid-term SIC and sea ice thickness (SIT) prediction (one-month) system was developed using a statistical method with 26-year re-analysis volume and a short-term predicted sea ice data.