Climate Exchange

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Exploiting the changing global climate

Chihito Kusabiraki, President, Representative Managing Director, Weathernews

eathernews founder Hiro Ishibashi regarded chang-

ing global temperatures as “a convenient truth.”

The company he founded to help protect the lives

of sailors through better maritime weather information has

evolved into a full service ‘weather-mall’ that provides risk

information for all modes of transportation, plus a diverse

range of other industries and the general public. However, the

final frontier of Ishibashi’s vision for his company was not

space, but the Arctic Ocean. In the unconventional fashion

typical of the company’s culture, the key to challenging this

final frontier was actually to reach into space to build infra-

structure for monitoring the progressive seasonal melting seen

over the last five years in the Arctic. This ultimate goal of safer,

faster and ‘eco-friendly’ routing is now on the verge of becom-

ing realized, as a revolutionary route advisory service for the

shipping industry.

Until now, commercial shipping traffic had only two options to get

from Europe to Asia:

• A 6,000 kilometre-long route through the Suez Canal that puts

the vessel at risk of piracy

• An even longer 8,000 kilometre route around the tip of South Africa

which puts the vessel at risk of freak waves.

Both of these options consume many metric tons of fuel which

accounts for much of the CO

released into the Earth’s atmosphere.

However, thanks to progressively receding ice extent in the arctic

ocean observed in recent years, there is now a third option: the

considerably shorter (and cleaner) Polar Route.

By sailing the Polar Route (also known as the Northern Sea

Route), a vessel can make the trip in a fraction of the time that the

ransport

and

nfrastructure

traditional options would take, thus burning less fuel

and releasing fewer carbon emissions. Weathernews has

been a passionate advocate of this alternative route in

the shipping industry, and has already assisted voyages

through the passage by means of the Weathernews

Global Ice Center (GIC). To foster the adoption of this

route by global shipping companies, Weathernews has

committed its human and financial resources to provid-

ing more reliable information to confirm and predict

favourable sailing conditions along the Arctic Ocean’s

northeast and northwest passages. At Weathernews, the

key for success is low-cost satellite monitoring.

Source: Weathernews

Decreasing Arctic ice area

Simulation model output from the I-SEE Engine, which

analyzes factors like sea temperature, current, and

sea-ice observations

The Polar Route (4,000 km), offering shorter, cleaner

alternative to the Suez Canal Route (6,000 km)