Wednesday, February 12, 2025

As Greenland’s glaciers melt, Denmark charts the changing waters

DGA nautical chart Greenland Kort 2750
Mariners should be aware that the majority of the paper charts for Greenland were originally compiled in the 1960s.
The source material on which these paper charts are based had limitations, especially with regard to their geometric accuracy.
The positioning of the information in these paper charts (i.e. topography, including the coastline, and hydrography) is therefore not accurate.
Since the positioning accuracy that can be achieved with satellite navigation systems (for instance GPS) is better than that of the paper charts, mariners are advised to use sources of positional information other than satellite navigation systems. 
see DGA
 
From ESRI by Steve Snow
 
Danish Geodata Agency modernizes chart-making workflows to keep pace with Greenland’s melting sea ice and glaciers.
Electronic Navigational Charts give ship captains accurate, timely information.
Scientists, fishermen, and miners to benefit from better navigational charts of Greenland.

Denmark once experienced its own Titanic moment.
On its maiden voyage on Jan. 30, 1959, Danish liner MS Hans Hedtoft struck an iceberg off the coast of Western Greenland.
All 95 passengers and crew on board were lost, and the wreckage of the ship has never been found.
Like the Titanic, the ship had been described as unsinkable.

This tragic event sparked a flurry of navigational charting activity by Danish Geodata Agency.
Prior to the incident, the world had long needed good charts for all of Greenland.

 
“In the 1960s, we used all available bathymetric and topographic sources in order to create the first set of Greenlandic charts,” said Rune Carbuhn Andersen, head of the Arctic Division of the Danish Hydrographic Office, a department within the Danish Geodata Agency. 
“The coastline for the charts was established in the 1940s and 1950s, and it still forms the foundation for the majority of the Greenlandic charts available today. Though the charts were accurate for the time, we now have to georectify old data with new data to produce an update.”

The renewed charting effort comes at a time when the world’s eyes are on Greenland.
Many compare the country to a canary in the coal mine for climate change because of its rapidly melting ice sheets.
Greenland’s navigational charts need to be updated to reflect the country’s changing coastline.
And scientists, eager to monitor the melting ice, need to know how to safely navigate the waters.

 
A tourist icebreaker moors off the coast of Greenland in Arctic waters.
Icebergs appear in the background.

Resource Challenges and Economic Opportunities

The possibility of ice-free Arctic waters is creating a growing demand for the region’s natural resources—minerals, uranium, petroleum, and fish once blocked by sea ice are now accessible and can become a part of global markets.

The largely untouched fish stocks drew interest first, given increasing pressure to feed the world’s growing population.
A recent historical agreement on fishing prevents an unregulated and chaotic free-for-all.
On the signing of this new accord, Denmark’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Anders Samuelsen commented, “when the ice melts, we will face new challenges but also new opportunities. We need to manage both.”

With the melting, other new economic opportunities have come to this isolated island. Mining has recently emerged as a growth sector.
A ruby pink sapphire mine operated by Norway’s LNS Group opened in 2017 and an anorthosite mine (a source for both calcium and aluminum) run by Canada’s Hudson Resources opened in February 2019. 
China has expressed interest in mining and other natural resources extraction and has framed the idea of a ‘Polar Silk Road’ to develop shipping lanes and build infrastructure throughout the Arctic.

This growing global economic interest fuels the need for updated charts that can enable safe passage and navigation.
“It’s very important for us to get all of the navigationally significant information that we have in the charts as soon as possible,” Andersen said. 
“We have one primary demand, and that’s safety at sea.”

 
The rapidly melting ice in Greenland has caught the world's attention,
increasing visits to this remote island.

Meeting the Safety Mission

Greenlandic waters are inherently dangerous, due to sea ice obstacles and unseen underwater rocks, frigid water temperatures, and swiftly changing weather.

“Fog and snow can come in very quickly,” Andersen said.
“If you’re in a big ship on a big route, it doesn’t matter that much. If you’re in a smaller boat, then it gets dangerous.”

The short summer season and large and complex state of Greenland’s surrounding waters makes frequent surveying impossible.
The goal for Andersen and his team is to define and survey navigational routes.
They work to provide more than one route in a given area because fast-moving glacier ice often fills up an entire fjord, making the waters of a route unnavigable.

The Danish Navy produces most of the seabed mapping using multibeam echosounders.
This type of sonar system measures the two-way travel time of sound waves transmitted from the vessel and received from a wide swath that is depth-dependent.
Precision in measurement of time, vessel motion, and seawater characteristics allows for accurate representation of the undersea canyons and submerged rocks that aid, or impede, navigation through the treacherous waters.

Icebergs, free-floating chunks broken from glaciers or ice shelves, also present an ongoing problem, although onboard ship radar has helped dispel some of that danger.

“When we have an accident it’s usually due to a lack of experience,” Andersen said.
“We had an accident on a very well-known rock close to Nuuk [the capital], which is an area where new and georectified charts have been released. The accident wasn’t the result of old or incorrect charts, it was probably more related to human errors on the bridge of the ship.”

 
Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean off the east coast of northern Greenland.

Digital Transformation of Surveys, Workflows, and Charts

Starting in the 1990s, the Danish Geodata Agency spent much of its time and resources getting the charts of Danish waters ready for electronic navigational charts (ENC).
This next-generation data product pushed adoption of digital workflows, allowing charting agencies to make chart updates with data collected by modern survey instruments such as GPS receivers and multibeam soundings.

“My department recently toured the bridge of one of the supply ships from Royal Arctic Lines to see how they navigate,” Andersen said. 
“They use the old paper charts along with radar, and they feel relatively safe. The problem is we can’t fit new data within these old charts and the world has long been moving to ENC.”

Capturing Greenland’s latest coastline data is an important part of the Danish Geodata Agency’s latest mission.
“Recognizing that we’re behind on Greenlandic chart production and not wanting to just sit on the latest data, we’ve tested an ENC Simple product,” Andersen added. 
 
DGA nautical raster chart coverage in the GeoGarage platform

Greenland ENC coverage
GeoGarage Google Earth ENC catalogue viewer updated kmz file

“Where we have strong confidence on our coastline data, we have auto-generated depth data for ENC Simple using multibeam readings and soundings. We gave that to a few pilots in the summer and they liked it for its added security. If they saw an iceberg in the middle of their route, it gave them confidence that they could route around it without hitting any rocks compared to just using an old paper chart with very limited depth information.”

This test has led to further experiments. 
The Danish Geodata Agency must have complete confidence in this automation before it proceeds to production because if the automated chart misinterprets the depth of a channel or fails to record dangerous obstacles that were captured on previous charts it can be sued for negligence if mapping errors cause a shipwreck.
While automation has proven helpful to both sea captains and the agency, it has yet to pass the test of becoming the authoritative charting source.
 
Kort 1250 paper map (projection Qornoq 1927) scale 1:7500
 
DK5PAAKN ENC Paamlut / scale 1:4000 / 2022

“It’s a big task to reproduce all the Greenlandic charts and ENCs given the complexity of the data and the large geographic area of sea surrounding Greenland,” Andersen said.
“Despite the challenge, it’s a matter of years before we can release new charts with new GPS correct information.
In the meantime, we hope to supplement them with alternative products like ENC Simple. But right now, we are focused on improving automation and production to get there.”
 
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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

AI from Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve cyclone rapid intensification forecasting



From MeteorologicalTechnologyInt by Elizabeth Baker

Researchers from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) have developed a new model for forecasting rapid intensification (RI) of a tropical cyclone (TC), based on ‘contrastive learning’.
This study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
 
AI-powered forecasting

The new model has two inputs: Input A, a known RI TC sample, and Input B, an unknown sample to be forecasted.
It extracts features from both inputs and calculates their distance in a high-dimensional space.
If the distance is small, Input B is forecasted as an RI TC; if large, it is classified as a non-RI TC.
Each unknown sample is compared with 10 known RI TC samples; if more than five of the comparisons classify it as an RI TC, it is then classified as such.


This study uses satellite imagery alongside atmospheric and oceanic data to balance RI and non-RI TC data.
The model learns to differentiate between RI and non-RI TCs by comparing the two inputs during training.

When tested on data from the Northwest Pacific between 2020 and 2021, the method achieved an impressive accuracy of 92.3% and reduced false alarms to 8.9%.
Compared with existing techniques, it improved accuracy by 12% and reduced false alarms by a factor of three, representing a major advance in forecasting.
 
Traditional tropical cyclone prediction methods

According to the team, RI of a TC, defined as a maximum sustained wind increase of at least 13m/s within 24 hours, remains one of the most challenging weather phenomena to forecast because of its unpredictable and destructive nature.
The researchers highlighted that although only 5% of TCs experience RI, its sudden and severe development poses significant risks to affected regions.

They also pointed out that traditional forecasting methods, such as numerical weather prediction and statistical approaches, often fail to consider the complex environmental and structural factors driving RI.
However, they acknowledged that while artificial intelligence (AI) has been explored as a means to improve RI prediction, most AI techniques have struggled with high false alarm rates and limited reliability.

“This study addresses the challenges of low accuracy and high false alarm rates in RI TC forecasting,” said Prof.
Li Xiaofeng, one of the authors of the report.
“Our method enhances understanding of these extreme events and supports better defenses against their devastating impacts.”

Although the IOCAS’s new model was initially trained on reanalysis data, the researchers created an operational forecasting scenario by replacing the reanalysis data with ECMWF-IFS numerical model forecast data from 2020 to 2021 as input.
The results demonstrated comparable forecasting accuracy, validating the reliability of this approach and confirming its suitability for real-time forecasting scenarios.
This capability is expected to enhance early warning systems, thus improving global disaster preparedness.

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Monday, February 10, 2025

Happy Birthday, NOAA Coast Survey


218 years ago today, President Thomas Jefferson signed An Act to provide for surveying the coasts of the United States, and NOAA’s Coast Survey has helped mariners navigate with confidence ever since.


Our charting products and services have expanded considerably over the past two centuries–we’re surveying to help reopen ports within days following a disaster, and using uncrewed surface vehicles among countless other examples–but wanted to take this time to look back at nautical charts, then and now. 

You can look through our comprehensive historical chart archive, which includes charts that even pre-date the Coast Survey.
 

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The Arctic: climate change’s great economic opportunity

The USGS Healy breaks ice around Renda, a Russian tanker, 250 miles south of Nome, Alaska in January 2012.

From The Economist by

An enormous prize is on offer.
When might it be grasped?

For bears of both the market and polar kind, a planet without an ice cap is a tragedy.
The Arctic is warming four times faster than the world at large, causing ice to shrink by an area the size of Austria each year.
Since the 1980s the volume of ice has fallen by 70% or more.
The Arctic’s first ice-free day may occur before 2030.

A warming Arctic should yield enormous dividends.
Retreating ice will create shipping shortcuts.
Maritime access and melting glaciers will make it easier to extract minerals, just when the world craves resources from the Arctic’s virgin geology.
Warming waters may entice hordes of fish.
This could up-end trade, energy and geopolitics.
The prospect has sparked a rush of diplomats and miners.
In December China set a world record, unveiling a “polar-ready” 58,000-tonne cargo ship.
One red-hatted politician has talked of seizing Greenland.
The obstacles, though, are as big as the opportunities.
Last month Norway paused plans for deep-sea mining; Russia’s own efforts have halted.
Can the prize be grasped?
And on what timescale?

EEZs and territorial waters of the Arctic. Shaded areas represent individual countries’ EEZs, the central unshaded area is the Arctic donut hole, points represent disputed territories; 
Council on Foreign Relations; 2014.
 
One benefit already on offer is bigger catches.
Some species, such as snow crab and Alaska’s king salmon, are struggling in warmer, somewhat acidified water.
And an international agreement has restricted fishing in the high seas.
But this is more than balanced by the fact that species from southern and temperate waters, including Atlantic cod, are moving to areas such as the Barents and Bering seas.
Nutrient-rich water could also help populations grow faster, while receding ice opens up new grounds and lengthens fishing seasons.
Mackerel did not arrive off Greenland until 2011.
By 2014 the oily fish represented 23% of the island’s total export earnings.

Such benefits may pale in comparison to those offered by new shipping routes.
To grasp how climate change may transform them, see the map below.
Melting ice could open three paths.
The first, known as the Northern Sea Route (nsr), hugs the Russian coast to connect the Barents Sea with the Bering Strait.
A second, dubbed the North-West Passage (nwp), runs along the North American Arctic coastline, from the Beaufort Sea to Baffin Bay.
Last comes the Transpolar Sea Route (tsr), which runs over the North Pole.

All three could shorten trips between Asia, North America and Europe, which account for most shipping, saving on fuel and wages.
They could also avoid chokepoints such as the Panama and Suez canals, which are busy, charge fees and, in the case of Suez, link to dangerous waters.

Exactly when these promises might be fulfilled depends on the route.
The nwp, which runs through Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, consists of narrow, winding channels.
It is melting more slowly than the nsr.
Although it stretches 1,500km, it has only one deep-water port and lacks emergency facilities.
Canada claims the nwp is in its waters; America and Europe deem it an international strait.
The route is also shallow, limiting the size of vessels.

The tsr dodges many of these problems.
It traverses the Central Arctic Ocean, which is much deeper.
It avoids territorial waters, cooling the political temperature.
And it provides the shortest route from the North Atlantic to the Pacific.
Proponents foresee thousands of vessels a year shuttling between North America and Asia, stopping en route at Alaska’s Dutch Harbour.
Even when the ice is gone, though, the route will be littered with icebergs, making it navigable only by icebreakers.
The vision of thousands of ships may have to wait until 2050 or so.


Major geopolitical changes are driving the need for U.S. attention in the Arctic, including Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the accession of Finland and Sweden to the NATO Alliance, increased collaboration between China and Russia in the region, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.
Read more on how NGA monitors this area of strategic importance  
 
Sea change

That makes the nsr the most promising option available.
The route has been open to ice-resistant ships in the summer almost every year since 2005.
Sections are navigable all year, albeit with the help of an icebreaker escort, which is expensive.
Traffic is rising nevertheless: a record 92 ships navigated the nsr last year, up from 19 in 2016.
As ice continues to melt, the nsr could appeal to two types of voyages.
One is traffic focused on the transport of resources from Russia’s far north.
The country has long aimed to secure year-round energy exports by shipping liquefied natural gas to Europe in the winter (for heating) and Asia in the summer (for cooling).
Although that grand vision receded after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, when Europe cut some links with its neighbour, the nsr could still help Russia ship coal, gas and metals to China and India.

The route may also lure some of the traffic connecting Asia to Europe.
It is unlikely to be used much for container ships, which tend to hop along hubs in the Gulf or South-East Asia rather than travel the whole route between Europe and Asia, says Rasmus Bertelsen of the uit Arctic University of Norway.
The north’s rough seas also risk thwarting the just-in-time logistics of the modern goods trade.
However, it could reduce the distance between Rotterdam and Shanghai by 5,000km, or 25%, and slash the journey from 30 to 14 days.
As a consequence, despite the route’s defects, it could still boost overall trade between Asia and the eu by 6%, according to Eddy Bekkers, now at the World Trade Organisation, and colleagues.

The Arctic’s last prize concerns commodities.
This used to mean hydrocarbons.
The region is thought to hold 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of untapped natural gas.
But its deposits are among the costliest to exploit—not ideal when demand for oil is flagging and a glut of natural gas, produced more cheaply in America and Qatar, is on the way.

Instead, the hope lies with the Arctic’s “green” minerals, which global warming is making more accessible.
They include cobalt, graphite, lithium and nickel, important ingredients in electric-car batteries; zinc, used in solar panels and wind turbines; copper, required for all sorts of things electric; and rare earths, crucial to many types of green and military equipment.
Niche metals including titanium, tungsten and vanadium, used to make “super-alloys”, are also prized.
Greenland looks especially well resourced in this regard.
The island has reserves of 43 out of 50 minerals deemed “critical” by the American government.
Its known rare earths amount to 42m tonnes, some 120 times more than the world mined in 2023.

Most of the Arctic’s minerals have not been mapped out in detail, notes Per Kalvig, who co-wrote a geological survey of Greenland.
As such, any exploitation could be at least a decade away.
But the International Energy Agency, an official forecaster, reckons that the global market for such minerals will double in value by 2040, if countries stick to existing climate pledges.
Western countries are also eager to discover new sources so as to bypass China, which dominates supply.

Firms that use artificial intelligence to sift through historical and scientific data in order to identify deposits could speed up progress.
Ice-capable rigs, autonomous mining vehicles, heavy-lifting drones and other technologies are being developed to withstand the Arctic.
Miners must learn how to extract and process metals that are often found in low concentrations or mingled with others.
Seven out of eight Arctic nations are members of nato; they may have to reinvent China’s techniques if they or their partners decide to limit its involvement in future projects.
 
Cold comfort

Three types of people must also be convinced: investors, national governments and locals.
Lumina Sustainable Materials, Greenland’s sole mine, offers a preview of the challenges.
Set up in 2013, it was first licensed to make a refined form of anorthosite, a light-coloured rock used in fibreglass and paint.
Yet the delicate material was too difficult to ship.
By 2020 the mine had exported little.
It took a new deep-sea port, and sustained lobbying by the firm’s new management—no longer in Vancouver but in Greenland—for Lumina to be allowed to export the rock in coarser form.
Production is set to increase to 210,000 tonnes in 2025, up from 35,000 in 2019, all of which will be shipped abroad.
The mine sits on a deposit of some 4bn tonnes.

In recent history, the Arctic’s allure has been as a place on which to put garrisons, spy devices and nuclear weapons.
Plenty of obstacles may prevent its transformation into a modern El Dorado.
Pooling the cash, tech and goodwill required to spark a boom will involve more time and effort than merely waiting for the ice to go.
Competition without co-operation risks holding back progress.
But the prize on offer is such that, over coming decades, the Arctic will surely become an economic as well as a geopolitical venue.

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Sunday, February 9, 2025

Image of the week : clouds

Fallstreak hole, also known as a cavum, is a circular or elliptical gap that can appear in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds. caused by supercooled water in the clouds suddenly evaporating or freezing, and may be triggered by passing aircraft
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