As the sea ice melts in the Arctic, with the high North region warming twice as fast than the rest of the planet, attention is increasingly placed on the twin issues of challenges and opportunities.

The Arctic Circle, located at 66 degrees north, has become unpredictable, with hazards and dilemmas that disrupt both daily life and long term planning in a region long identified by its relative isolation, thick and persistent multiyear ice, uncharted waters, winter storms and months of darkness.

Yet, in seeming paradox, the warming and accelerating sea-ice retreat is also creating opportunities for the interlinked subjects of transport and trade. Recent press coverage has highlighted the potential for commercially feasible Arctic shipping routes, with a particular focus on the potential for trans-Arctic voyages that would more closely link, for example, Shanghai to Rotterdam. These and other considerations warrant a closer look.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for transit shipping across the Russian or Canadian Arctic coastlines is its shorter route, by forty percent, to travel from Asia to European markets rather than through the Suez and/or Panama Canals. Climate models, show ice-free summers, likely between 2050 and 2070, with the east Arctic shipping lanes such as the Northern Sea Route remaining the most reliable. Earth’s Future reported a brief opening of shorter central routes crossing the North Pole by 2060, using Polar Class 6 ships.

In the past several years, several major global shippers such as the world’s largest shipping company, Denmark’s Maersk and China’s COSCO tested the northern routes to determine their feasibility as an alternative to the southerly transcontinental shipping lanes of the Suez and Panama Canals.

Last year, the Venta Maersk, an ice-class ship capable of operating in unconsolidated ice up to three feet thick, was the first containership to sail the Northern Sea Route – moving from Vladivostok in the East to St. Petersburg. The Maersk, able to carry 3,600 twenty-foot containers, demonstrated that container transit can be done.

A year earlier, Maersk’s main competitor, China’s COSCO, sent about a dozen vessels through the Arctic, including five transit voyages. Using ice-strengthened vessels, both companies succeeded in proving the feasibility of transiting the northern routes, although neither company intends to alter their existing routes – at least not for the present.