Two additional late-summer shipping routes across the Arctic Ocean could be possible by midcentury (2040-2059) due to less summer ice. The black line represents the existing shipping route; the red represents potential new routes. Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The earliest that sea routes would be taken directly over the North Pole and through the famed Northwest Passage would likely be in the 2040s or 2050s, says Laurence Smith, a geography professor at UCLA. This sort of shipping would also occur only in late summer and early autumn, he adds: The prime month would be September, when Arctic sea ice is at its annual minimum.
Smith estimates that traveling from Rotterdam to the Bering Strait via the Northern Sea Route would take almost 19 days, while traveling across the North Pole could be done in 14.6 days.
The new shipping routes in the Arctic won’t replace the routes through the Panama or Suez Canals, which remain the primary routes for worldwide shipping.