Regards

Andy

It’s not on the lens but is attached to the camera support, judging by the size of the ice crystals it’s within a foot of the lens. The shadow is from the camera support I expect.

Looks like the webcam is still working.

BTW, you can see all the pictures from http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/

HTH., Symon.

From the Ice
Logistically, all the loose ends of the expedition have now been tied up.

On the 5th June, Kenn Borek Air scooped up the remaining fuel drums from our fuel cache on the Arctic Ocean, before returning to the base at Resolute.

Today all the freight arrived back at the Ops Room here in London. The laborious task of putting it into some sort of order begins. Some of the kit (sledges, clothing, drills etc) will be used for display purposes, some will be binned and some will be stored for any future projects

REPLY: Good for them and thanks for the note – Anthony

Regards

Andy

Also bear in mind that wind make the ‘real’ temperature lower when we talk about temperatures below + 4 Celsius degrees. Which of course all that have had to use salt of any kind to keep larger areas icefree in non Arctic regions are aware of.

As for the icedrift, the changed GPS position of this and other stations are exactly what they should be had the normal centrifugal power been taken into consideration together with the fact that our Earth isn’t a real globe but due to centrifugaleffects are more ‘flat’ around the poles.

The Canadian ice Service was quite political with this last year declaring the NW Passage open when it wasn’t and they were caught on that one. If my memory serves me they declared the northern route open when only an Ice Breaker could pass through and then tried to fudge their way out of it.

CIS is not quite lilly white. They like a little AGW politics with their ice.

With the extent of cold in Northern Canada last year and the quick freeze in the Arctic and the continueing cold I expect the Arctic to have a greater extent at the minimum than in 2008. In the 40’s when the PDO changed to the cool cycle the Arctic rapidly realized an increase in ice and it was the end of easy summer travel for the Hudson Bay Company to stock it’s outposts. Some outposts were closed down due to the increased amounts of ice in the late ’40’s. expect history to repeat. Really no need for all the fancy scientific stuff.

yes this is based on a linear extrapolation of the 2000s from the cryosphere. Linear trends is possible even for nonlinear behaviors if the period is short enough – at least this is what Taylor thought. Could you place a figure on the 2 sigmas prediction, because it all depends on the dataset you’re using? Thanks.

Whether or not an El Nino forms, look at all the data and see for yourself where it could be headed, who knows how this will affect things like Sea Ice, or whether it’s already starting to affect Summer temperatures, it also doesn’t quite look it’ll get even near 1998 levels and it may not even get to 2006 levels.

http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/ARCTIC001/20090603000000_ARCTIC001_0004399792.pdf

I haven’t seen much about the Ozone hole recently except that it still seems to come and go some 22 years after the Montreal Protocol. Thus the title “Gas that saved the ozone layer . . . ” to which you refer seems to miss the mark. One argument is that not enough time has gone by for the CFCs humans produced to have cleared the system and some sold before were later released. On the other hand, maybe there are sufficient naturally supplied halogens in the atmosphere that the CFCs scare was bogus and that effort – phase out of CFCs and replacement with other chemicals – was just a preliminary to the current CO2 scam.

The latest go-round on this issue here on WUWT is:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/26/galactic-cosmic-rays-may-be-responsible-for-the-antarctic-ozone-hole/#more-6560

The main thrust of the article of that post was directed toward the role cosmic rays play in the process in contrast to sunlight. The article did not address directly the sources of the halogen molecules, nor did the comments add enough clarity for me. Still, I favor the idea that the ozone hole predated the industrially derived CFCs and that it (the hole) will continue to expand and contract.

The above post was re-opened for comments but for how long I do not know. Maybe we’ll find a new paper on the issue soon and have another go at this issue. The prediction for a severe ozone hole this year (2009) made in the mentioned article is soon to be tested. Maybe this will induce a few articles if it does prove true.

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html

1. Are you referring to a linear trend? But the historical sea ice data that creates the mean and standard deviations of the mean do not act linearly.

2. Using a non linear averaging statistic, what would your prediction be in terms of its relationship to 2 standard deviations from the mean?

Given the current measurement and its residence well inside the 2 standard deviation area, and given the predicted weather, current, and wind patterns through the summer, I predict a greater chance (better than 50%) of maximum melt to be within the 2 standard deviation of the mean.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/050409.html

Acceptability depends on the number of data points, for a small number of data points two standard deviations could be very unlikely.
Check out Chauvenet’s criterion for example.

That snow and ice should be something like a meter away from the camera, maybe more.

Not at zero but certainly those lenses will focus at a minimum distance of ~0.1m which is what that image looks like, so it is snow on the camera housing is what’s being seen, not a snow drift or pressure ridge.