Value of ocean current information for strategic routing

The authors estimate the strategic routing value of ocean currents on trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific routes for thirty origin-destination port pairs. They do so by calculating the fuel consumption on routes strategically selected to take advantage of ocean currents relative to that on routes where the current data is ignored. The results show that exploiting currents in strategic routing could reduce the annual fuel costs of the U.S. and world commercial fleets by $10 million and $70 million, respectively. The authors argue that these figures should be considered lower bounds because of the coarse resolution of the available current data, resolution which should be improved with improving modeling and satellite detection systems. The figures are useful in analyzing the desirability of planned satellite missions and of private investment in dynamic current detection systems for commercial routing