Even when the calculated routes enter via the Sound they all continue south of Bornholm (not shown). In general, the optimization of a route has the largest impact on the integrated measure when

the values of the measure are largest. For the studied route, this occurs in the Arkona Basin and in the Gulf of Finland. However, the route would not necessarily be affected the most in those areas. Instead, the route would be affected most where there is a conflict of interests, e.g., between shortest distance and the used measure. For the studied Erastin solubility dmso route, this occurs around Bornholm, where the shortest path is north of Bornholm but has less advantageous values of the measure than the path to the south of Bornholm

(blue instead of yellow in Fig. 4a), as well as the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, where a more direct path goes closer to land. In those areas, the weighting between the used measure and other terms in the target function becomes important. Of course, the method by which a measure expressed in time is converted to a measure in which a lower value is better affects the characteristics of the measure. The chosen method, to invert the value, compresses the longer times, which contributes to the flatness of these measures in Fig. 6. There are other ways to perform the conversion, Panobinostat price such as considering some upper limit of time, such as the simulation length, and subtracting the measure from this value analogously to the conversion selleck compound of the percentage measures. The chosen time limit affects the characteristics of the converted measure. Changing the time limit is identical to adding a constant to those times that are not affected by a cut off. Due to the linearity of the integral, adding a constant to the measure is identical to adding a term in the target function for the shortest path with the weight of the added constant. The seasonal cycle of the wind has an impact on our results. We found a seasonal signal for the mean over the domain of average of still-at-sea after 30 days (Fig. 10). The local minimum in June is surprising, and further investigations

are necessary to elucidate the mechanism behind this result. The section in Fig. 12 was chosen because it demonstrated a clear difference in the location of the maxima during the two seasons and should thus affect optimal routes. However, the results are not statistically significant, possibly because the periods of the seasons are inappropriately defined. In the study by Soomere et al. (2011d) of the Gulf of Finland, four seasons were used: a calm season, a windy season and two transition seasons. The authors found seasonal differences in both currents and transport. Our results also suggest that there are decadal variations. However, the time period of this study is too short to confirm significant, spatial changes of the routes on a decadal time scale.