The Northwest Passage connects the Beaufort Sea in the west with Baffin Bay in the east. It is a shorter route to move goods between the Pacific and Atlantic regions than the Panama and Suez Canals.
For years, scientists have obsessively monitored Arctic sea ice: how it expands in the winter months and how much of it shrinks in the summer. Now, a study that zeroed in on a big chunk of the Northwest Passage, says sea ice there remains too thick and treacherous to be a regular commercial shipping route for decades.
A team of researchers measured the sea ice thickness for about 1,000 kilometres between Resolute and Cambridge bays earlier this year and found that it’s up to three metres thick in most regions of the passage.
It would take 30, or even 50 years, before the ice becomes weaker, said Christian Haas, one of the authors of the study and Canada Research Chair for Arctic Sea Ice Geophysics at York University.