3D maps in current affairs

 This pics up on the previous Beautiful maps... as well as Arctic Waterfront... re: the distribution of influence over the Arctic in the news of late.

This time let's look at the elevation maps of the area:

• High Resolution Elevation Model of the Arctic (Esri Living Atlas)
• Seabed Sediment Thickness (Esri Living Atlas)

Arctic DEM in tan-green & sediment thickness in blue-cyan (click to enlarge, full size)

The sediment thickness acts as a proxy for basement depth: if seabed is relatively uniform as in a closed ocean like the Arctic (without continental shelf & abyssal plain) then the thickness is roughly equivalent to the depth to basement. So it acts as on offshore extent of the detailed relief map, highlighting where the ridges are in particular: this is important as Russia laid claim to the North Pole as the Lomonosov Ridge underlying it extends into Russian waters (Am. Soc. Int'l Law).

Let's now add sea ice extent and shipping lanes. Climate warming is opening up both Northwest Passage & Northern Sea Route (Perplexity), respectivley West across the Canadian Arctic Islands and East over Siberia to China. The former may still be problematic with relatively narrow channels. But the latter is a boon for China to, say, ship EV's (electric vehicles) to Europe & America... thus avoiding the troublesome Red Sea & Suez Canal or the distant southern tip of Africa!

• Median Sea Ice Extent for the Arctic (Esri Living Atlas)
• Shipping & Hydrography (NGA Arctic Summit, Esri News)

Sea Ice Extent & Shipping (click to enlarge, full size)

In this "International Space Station view", the Northwest Passage is in black, the Transpolar Route in green & the Northern Sea Route in red. Notice the bald spot atop? Although the Esri Living Atlas from this month explains the provenance details, "atmospheric physicists find error in widely cited Arctic snow cover observations" (physics.org). We're only interested, however, in the southern edge that affects shipping lane: six years ago I mapped the sea-ice extents; web- & story-maps in the linked blog post are gone (viz. indented paragraph here), but I posted a video here:

YouTube, see Community, Climate and Maps...

In fact I created this to bird-dog NOAA vs. NSIDC data six years ago here, when I thought they underestimated the ice shrinkage and the impact on climate change & sea level rise.

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