Anton Sigitov

LLP ICEMAN.KZ

The Caspian Sea is a land locked water body in the central part of Eurasia. Its northern shallow part is seasonally ice covered. Intensive economic activity comprising oil and gas, fishery, and marine trade take place in this part of the sea. Some of them require assessment of impact from ice actions. ICEMAN.KZ developed the database with daily obs...

The persistent reduction trend of ice volume and coverage over the whole Northern Caspian Sea through the record of the latest seasons in history illustrates the effect of climate change on the ice regime. Ice volume and coverage indexes are derived from consistent daily observations of ice cover. Direct hierarchy of relationship between these aggr...

Ice cover mobility is one of the most important ice cover parameters that allows estimating possibility of ice events and mode of ice interaction with offshore structures. It allows aggregating possible parameters when compiling scenarios for assessment of hazardous conditions affecting marine operations and emergency escape. This paper provides in...

Deformed ice is a general term for ice which has been squeezed together and in places forced upwards (and downwards). Subdivisions are rafted ice, ridged ice and hummocked ice. There are little to no physical observations available for the Caspian Sea region. Specifically, there is little knowledge available on spatial and temporal distribution of...

Ice cover along the shores of the Northeastern Caspian stabilizes through the course of a season depending on severity, number, and duration of freezing and thawing events, wind conditions. Once stable ice zones develop, they persist growing in thickness and building up strength before break-up. Knowing wind speed threshold that leads to formation...

Ice season severity index is usually described with accumulated Freezing Degree Days (FDD) in a particular area. Daily average air temperatures comprising FDD were derived by ICEMAN.KZ for various zones of the Caspian Sea from ERA-5 reanalysis data with modifications to account for ground measurements in the region. Spatial variation of the index e...

Simulation was performed with Genetic Algorithm (GA) which is a heuristic algorithm for path search optimization as reanalysis using historical observations of ice conditions as input. Several transportation modes (conventional shallow water fleet, Air Cushion Vehicles (ACV) and Amphibious All-Terrain Vehicles (ATV)) were considered with their limi...

Ice gouging in the Caspian Sea has been studied for a long time for constructing and operating underwater pipelines from oil and gas fields to the land. Last time we defined the areas of stamukhi localization and presented a big picture of Caspian shelf zonation according to ice gouging intensity. Stamukhi are a terminal stage of deformed ice evolu...

The Caspian Sea seasonal ice cover develops each winter despite of it being in mid-latitudes. Increasing development of oil and gas fields challenges researchers to ensure operational safety. The Caspian Sea has seen significant water level fluctuations in its recent history. And in the same time, it is vulnerable to effects of climate change. Exte...

Automatic ice drift detection from remote sensing data is a straight forward process in the arctic where revisit time by polar orbiting satellites is quite small and it is possible to rely on one satellite to define change detection algorithms and extract drift data. But if we consider sub-Arctic regions intervals of about three days minimum betwee...

After Kashagan project going into production Industry continues exploring and developing oil fields in the northern part of the Caspian Sea. Pearls, Kalamkas, Kurmangazy, Zhanbay fields are either going through FEED stage or in discussion to launch exploratory drilling. Regardless of their location in the region pipeline is the most feasible way to...

Current trends show decreasing water level in the Caspian Sea. This is a doomsday scenario for marine operations in the Northern part of the sea. Shallowing waters may limit both access to the sea through Volga-Caspian Channel from the world as well as internal cargo transit operations to big existing projects at Kashagan and Prorva areas and sever...

The Northern part of the Caspian Sea gets covered with ice every year and stays frozen for 4-5 months depending on winter severity. Therefore, marine operations are different during winter and open water seasons. The transition between summer fleet and icebreaker supported marine operations is economically feasible. However, this transition needs t...

Many factors influencing the movement of ice such as wind, ice concentration, ice thickness, roughness, water currents, Coriolis force, bathymetry, artificial and natural obstacles in the area. Current speeds in the Caspian Sea are relatively small and so the main driving force for ice movements is wind. Therefore, main goal of this work was to stu...

Many factors influencing the movement of ice such as wind, ice concentration, ice thickness, roughness, water currents, Coriolis force, bathymetry, artificial and natural obstacles in the area. Current speeds in the Caspian Sea are relatively small and so the main driving force for ice movements is wind. Therefore, main goal of this work was to stu...

Ice and water actions on structural elements of a quay in Arctic conditions are studied in natural conditions and in laboratory experiments. Significant deformations of the steel sheet piling supporting the coal quay in Kapp Amsterdam in Svalbard were discovered. Physical mechanism of the ice action on the skirts are related to the brine migration...