Climate change and safe design of ship structures

Abstract

The paper addresses projected changes of wave climate in the North Atlantic and their impact on the safe design of ships, with a particular focus given on associated uncertainties. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses four scenarios for future greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). Two of these scenarios are applied to investigate how sensitive the future North Atlantic wave climate is to the emissions they represent. Winds obtained from six global climate models have been used to simulate waves for a historical period at the end of last century and to project waves for a future period towards the end of this century for these two scenarios. Based on these projections, possible changes in extreme wind and waves are investigated and the associated uncertainties are discussed. The occurrence of rogue-prone sea states which may trigger generation of rogue waves in the past Ocean Engineering 2 and future climate is also studied. It is shown how the scientific findings on uncertainties related to climate change projections and rogue waves can be incorporated in the risk-based approach used in current design practice of tankers, and ship structures in general. The potential effect of climate change on the safety level of current design practice for tankers is demonstrated. Finally, the paper discusses how structural design of ships can be upgraded to account for climate change and rogue waves without necessarily leading to significant economic consequences.

Comparison of Wind Speed and Wave Height Trends from Twentieth-Century Models and Satellite Altimeters

“…Long-term changes in ocean surface wind speed and wave height have received increasing attention as climate change impacts have become evident (Young et al 2011;Mentaschi et al 2018;Luijendijk et al 2018;Young and Ribal 2019). Changes in surface wind speed and wave height may dramatically affect coastal communities (Ranasinghe 2016), as well as offshore operations (Bitner-Gregersen et al 2018), but uncertainties still characterize our current knowledge of long-term variations in these quantities (Rhein et al 2013).…”

Wave Climate Change in the North Sea and Baltic Sea

“…Under this scenario, the global mean sea-level and surface temperatures at the end of the 21st century show anomalies relative to the period 1986-2005 in ranges from 0.45 m to 0.82 m and from 2.6 • C to 4.8 • C, respectively [6]. Following the approach proposed by several recent studies (e.g., [2,5,10,14]), the RCP8.5 scenario was selected in this study to investigate the maximum range of variations in the wave climate at the regional scale.…”

Using systems thinking and causal loop diagrams to identify cascading climate change impacts on bioenergy supply systems

“…During Hurricane Irma in 2017, several major ports in the southeast US had to be closed for operation for several days (Carter et al 2018 ). Increased storminess and wave height along North Atlantic shipping routes could be hazardous to ships and force switching to longer, but less storm prone routes, resulting in increased prices and supply delays (Arent et al 2014 ), as well as the need to allocate more resources to ship maintenance or upgrade ship structures (Bitner-Gregersen et al 2018 ). Transportation may also experience fuel supply disruptions and price spikes if fuel production and distribution is adversely affected by climate change (DOE-EPSA 2015 ).…”