Radical New Icebreaker Will Travel Through the Ice Sideways 62
cylonlover writes "Given that icebreakers clear a path for other ships by traveling through the ice head-on (or sometimes butt-on), then in order for one of them to clear a wider path, it would have to be wider and thus larger overall ... right? Well, Finland's Arctech Helsinki Shipyard is taking a different, more efficient approach. It's in the process of building an asymmetric-hulled icebreaker that can increase its frontal area, by making its way through the ice at an angle of up to 30 degrees."
been working on it for some time (Score:5, Informative)
Fwiw, the Finns have been researching this idea for a while now; interesting to see it actually being built. Here is a 1999 paper [pdf] [akerarctic.com] from one of Arctech Helsinki's parent companies studying the feasibility of such a design, which has some good information on the details.
Icebreakers work from above (Score:5, Informative)
Providing they have the horsepower it can be done in a relatively smooth way or they need to regularly back up for a new run onto the ice.
The ship in the article is 'only' fit for up to 60 cm. in sideways and 100 cm. of ice in regular mode, not exactly a lot of obstruction when you consider the typical ice sheet north of Russia is between 1.2 and 2.5 m. thick.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/russia-building-worlds-largest-nuclear-powered-icebreaker [popsci.com]
Re:It probably has some impact.. (Score:2, Informative)
Well, I'm not a scientist in this field of study, . . .
Obviously not.
Break ice into smaller pieces (e.g. cut huge swaths of it in half and so on), and it'll melt faster.
Maybe, but this is very thin sea ice (50-100 cm), which melts annually anyway. It's not like they're going into the icecaps with this thing.
As for the parent of your post, warming up the planet has increased the demand for ice breakers, because more places can now be reached. We might even finally see a northwest passage, but it will need an icebreaker to keep it open as long as possible. Russia has lots of icebreakers for reaching its northern border. Some of them are nuclear powered!
Re:Icebreakers work from above (Score:5, Informative)
It's meant for the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg. A PDF report at http://www.baltice.org/ [baltice.org] shows that the thickest ice during 2011-2012 winter was 50cm.
It's true that as Russia is more and more interested in exploiting the arctic sea, they will need bigger things.
Re:Waste of Time (Score:4, Informative)
While the z0mg!panic! was stupid, there is an issue here. Meltwater ponds reflect less sunlight than bare ice, so warm the ice underneath much quicker (until it cracks and the pond drains out.) [...]
Refereed article on this can be found here:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1963.html [nature.com]
The surface albedo of the Arctic sea-ice zone is a crucial component in the energy budget of the Arctic region1, 2. The treatment of sea-ice albedo has been identified as an important source of variability in the future sea-ice mass loss forecasts in coupled climate models3. There is a clear need to establish data sets of Arctic sea-ice albedo to study the changes based on observational data and to aid future modelling efforts. Here we present an analysis of observed changes in the mean albedo of the Arctic sea-ice zone using a data set consisting of 28 years of homogenized satellite data4. Along with the albedo reduction resulting from the well-known loss of late-summer sea-ice cover5, 6, we show that the mean albedo of the remaining Arctic sea-ice zone is decreasing. The change per decade in the mean August sea-ice zone albedo is 0.029±0.011. All albedo trends, except for the sea-ice zone in May, are significant with a 99% confidence interval. Variations in mean sea-ice albedo can be explained using sea-ice concentration, surface air temperature and elapsed time from onset of melt as drivers.