Advance information about the sea ice within ship transit is very important for planning of optimum ship routing during Antarctic Expeditions. The information on sea ice condition has become available after the advent of satellite data.However, this information is not readily available for ship routing. Space Applications Centre (ISRO) is providing Sea Ice Advisory to Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica (ISEA) for last three years using multi-satellite inputs including Indian satellites/sensors OSCAT, SARAL/AltiKa, RISAT-1 SAR. The information on sea ice concentration, deformation of pack ice, sea ice drift, sea ice thickness etc were derived from satellite data analysis. This knowledge along with the other a-priori information was used to provide sea ice advisory for ship routing during 32nd, 33rd and 34th ISEA.For further details on technique of Sea Ice Advisory refer Rajak et al., 2014. The routes suggested during these advisories were followed by the voyage ship and the expedition could be completed successfully. The advisory has been found valuable for safe ship navigation. It has been appreciated by the ISEA Voyage Leaders, Captains of the ship and NCAOR, Goa, India.

Reference: D. Ram Rajak, R.K. Kamaljit Singh, Megha Maheshwari, Jayaprasad P., Sandip R. Oza, Javed M. Beg, Rashmi Sharma and Raj Kumar (2014). Sea Ice Advisory using Earth Observation Data for Ship Routing during Antarctic Expedition.Scientific Report No. SAC/EPSA/AOSG/SR/22/2014, Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad – 380015, India.