Frozen Arctic lakes becoming less capable of supporting cargo aircraft

Frozen Arctic lakes becoming less capable of supporting cargo aircraft

The ability to land a military cargo plane on a frozen Arctic lake is becoming less likely as a warming environment reduces the number of subfreezing days. That puts ice thickness below the minimum needed to support heavy aircraft.

Arctic lakes sometimes won't reach that minimum thickness at all.

New research by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists and others says those changes present a growing challenge for Arctic logistics and security operations that have relied on those ice runways and travel corridors.

The research calls for a real-time ice monitoring network.

The findings were published in the spring edition of the Journal of Arctic Security, a publication of the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies. The center is part of the Department of Defense and located on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.

The work centered on Teshekpuk Lake, on Alaska's Arctic Ocean coastline about 80 miles southeast of Utqiaġvik. The goal was to determine whether the ice could support the landing of an LC-130 Skibird, the ski-outfitted version of the U.S. military's C-130 Hercules workhorse cargo aircraft.

"We found that ice isn't getting that thick anymore," said Benjamin Jones, the research paper's lead author and a research associate professor at the UAF Institute of Northern Engineering.

"We tend to have more winter snowfall now than we used to, so there's more of an insulated blanket on the lake ice," he said. "That keeps it from attaining the critical threshold of 55 inches for landing military cargo aircraft."

Research professor Andrew Mahoney of the UAF Geophysical Institute is among the research paper's co-authors. Other co-authors include researchers from the University of Toronto, University of Wyoming, Dartmouth College, the North Slope Borough, the New York National Guard and the Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.

Mahoney said their findings can also benefit commercial operations.

"Lake ice landings played an important role in the industrial development of the North Slope," he said. "And there are still some places in northern Alaska that rely on heavy aircraft like C-130s, C-47s and DC-6s landing on frozen lakes for seasonal resupply."

Mahoney and Jones both say the 55-inch minimum, in place for several decades for LC-130s, is no longer attainable because winters are not long enough or cold enough to reach that thickness. They say the minimum should be revisited to determine whether it can be safely lowered.

The researchers drilled through Teshekpuk Lake's ice in 2020, conducted ground-penetrating radar surveys and collected more than 25,000 measurements of ice thickness and snow depth. They tracked ice growth with a satellite-linked monitoring station.

They also used satellite radar imagery to map black ice and identify hazards such as cracks and pressure ridges.

The research team compared their 2020 data with decades of lake ice records across northern Alaska to assess how climate-driven warming has been affecting Arctic runway conditions.

The results come from coordinating two independent projects. Mahoney specializes in sea ice research, while Jones studies lake ice.

One was Jones' work on a National Guard project through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the North Slope Borough. The Guard wanted to land an LC-130 on Teshekpuk Lake as part of a training exercise and needed to track the lake's ice growth.

The other was Mahoney's work through the Army's Integrated System for Operations in Polar Seas program. ISOPS studies how to safely move people and equipment between sea and land, over ice and by foot and snowmachine.

Mahoney contrasted the military's use of sea ice versus lake ice. He pointed to the Navy's periodic Operation Ice Camp, an international exercise that includes the surfacing of a Navy submarine at a camp built on the sea ice. He and others from UAF provide ice analysis for the weeks-long exercise.

"We don't have HC-130s as an option. The ice isn't long and smooth enough or thick enough for that, so we have to use smaller aircraft," he said. "That imposes a big constraint on what we can do."

That highlights the value of lake ice in a must-land situation, provided it's thick enough for heavy-lift aircraft.

"Knowing about landing planes on frozen lakes like Teshekpuk is an essential consideration for logistics in the Arctic," Mahoney said.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Benjamin Jones, [email protected]; Andrew Mahoney, [email protected]

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