Arctic Shipping Forum

Our project partners from England, Norway and Finland represented KEPLER & the EU Arctic Cluster at the the 15^th annual Arctic Shipping Forum in Helsinki. 

Participants at ASF were welcomed to find out more about the project at the KEPLER booth and Penny Wagner (METNo), Sea Ice Researcher and KEPLER work package leader, presented an interactive discussion panel asking ‘How can collaboration be implemented to improve Maritime domain awareness?’

As user needs are at the centre of the KEPLER project, our focus for this event was to open up a direct dialogue with the maritime community- seeking end user requirements for sea ice and forecasting needs.

Four key questions were on display during the event;

1. What would be the most useful sea ice and icebergs parameter to have, that is currently unavailable to you?
2. What do you see as the status of Arctic shipping in 10 years? I.e. new routes, timeline of shipping season, regulatory requirements, weather and ice information needs… etc.
3. Low spatial resolution hemispheric coverage or high spatial resolution regional coverage. Which is more useful to you and when?
4. Do you use forecasts? If so, what time range of sea ice forecasts are useful to you?

If you would like to participate and answer the questions above, you can also submit your feedback here: Submit Maritime Feedback

This feedback will be combined with stakeholder responses from various activities  carried out over the life of the project, and will help inform the recommendations we make to Copernicus for polar region monitoring.