The purpose of this program was to collect data relevant to developing year-round transportation capabilities in the Arctic Ocean. The US Maritime Administration sponsored this multi-year program to define environmental conditions in the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas; to obtain data to improve design criteria for ice-worthy ships and offshore structures; and to demonstrate the operational feasibility of commercial icebreaking ships along possible future Arctic marine routes. The research was performed using the US Coast Guard Polar Star and Polar Sea ice-class ships, which were at the time the world's most powerful non-nuclear icebreakers and the only US ships capable of mid-winter Arctic operations.
The items in this data set are PDFs of Arctic Marine Transportation reports with embedded data, along with a PDF of the Achievement Record Brochure (Achievement_Record_1979_1984_Brochure.pdf), and JPEG images providing a historical context of the program. The 15 JPEG images and a PDF of accompanying captions (G02196_images_captions.pdf) are located in the images directory.
The PDF reports, an Executive Summary (Executive_Summary_Arctic_Marine_Transportation_Program.pdf), and the Appendix to the Executive Summary (Executive_Summary_Arctic_Marine_Transportation_Program_Appendix_A_List_of_Reports.pdf) are located in the Arctic_Marine_Transportation_Reports directory. Note that page 33 of the Executive Summary is missing. The Appendix to the Executive Summary contains an index of reports included in this data set. This index lists 64 reports; however, out of these 64, the following reports were never included and their location is unknown: 1, 4, 36, 37, 60, 61, and 62. Also note that reports 35 and 44 come in two parts.
The data cover the years 1979 to 1986 and were collected from ships in the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas. Data are available via FTP.
This data is being provided as is. NOAA@NSIDC believes these data to be of value, but is unable to provide documentation. If you have information about this data set that others would find useful, please contact NSIDC User Services.