Lancaster Sound

 

Lancaster Sound

The Northwest Passage has been getting plenty of press and just looking at the map we can all see Lancaster Sound.  If this were ice free it would become an ideal route between Europe and Asia.

The problem is not first year ice but multi year ice blowing into the sound and also cutting off the western exit.  The good news though is that the sound does open up from east to west all the way to Banks Island which is actually a giant sand or mud bank.  I suspect vikings hauled ships over that to ultimately reach the Pacific northwest.

Understand that first year seaice can be crushed by icebreakers consistently and this likely means even in the winter.  This is one reason that Churchill may be more open than anyone ever guessed.  A large wide icebreaker can push through frozen seaice mush ahead of a string of freighters easily enough and move freely into the open ocean.  obviously bigger is better and nucluear will also be better in both Hudbay, but also in certainly the souther arm of the northwest passage and ultimately in the north arm through lancaster sound.

My take home is that we can engineer around dealing with single year ice and perhaps make this work even year round with just nice big icebreakers.  The real problem is multiyear ice.  This will push south in the Bering Sea and particularly cut off Lancaster Sound.

I do think we can cut off one inlet just before the western mouth which can open the sound all the way to the Western mouth which at least eases the preseure on the southern arm by just keeping multiyear ice out of the sound.  doing just that is at least plausible using causeways over shallow straits..  Still big time engineering.

We may even be able to push out a causeway a few miles in order to keep multiyear ice away from the Western Mouth.  All of which extends the zone of single year ice which then melts out every year.

The mere fact that the channels are now been used through the summer window successfully is enough to confirm acting to both protect the channels and to extend their reach is likely practical enough to largely succeed..

I do not know if multiyear ice slams the Bering sea shut during the winter, but suspect most years this can be worked around.  this is particularly true today because we have lost a great deal of multiyear ice which actually made these passages open in the first instance.

Canada will need the big nuclear icebreakers to keep hudbay open as long as possible and extending operation into the northwest pasaage is a natural transition even if for lenghtening the season deep into the fall.  A six month season should be practical even with bad ice.  It is usually clearing in June and pushing to late november against fresh sea ice seems likely.  then clearing hudbay for six months will work.