Regular readers may recall that back on June 15th, I pointed out the absurdity of this “Row to the Pole” publicity stunt sponsored by the whisky company “Old Pulteney” which had plans to row to the North Magnetic Pole (based on the 1996 location) and along the way take some temperature, water, and ice samples along the way in the guise of a science expedition.
Only problem was, the North Magnetic Pole is far into the Arctic sea now, and ice locked. The destination they chose for “Row to the Pole” hasn’t been the location of the North Magnetic Pole for 15 years, as I illustrated below, they’ll fall about 738 km/458 miles short of the North Magnetic Pole due to a drift of about 41km/year:
Undeterred by this complication, the group of rowers has set off anyway, and made some good progress according to their Facebook page, covering 40 kilometers on the first day. They even offer a satellite tracking page to watch the progress.
Too bad though they have not checked the latest satellite images from NASA’s AQUA Modis RAPIDFIRE page. I did, and it looks like the expedition is going to hit a wall of ice
soon.
Here’s the area I chose to look at today from this NASA image link=>
I rotated/cropped, plotted the approximate proposed path, and annotated the image from NASA to help readers see what the Row to the Pole people are soon going to run into in a couple of days:
Note the patch of white in the red box that the planned rowing path transects. Are those clouds or ice? The magnified view area gives the answer below.
Yup, unless those guys in the rowboat have an icebreaker leading the way, or there’s an “instamelt” de-icing ahead of them, they likely aren’t going anywhere near the old North Magnetic Pole circa 1996, much less the actual one.
Looks like “Scotch on the Rocks” for them.
However, like any good publicity stunt, they’ll probably figure out some way to make a success out of it, perhaps declaring that “important though incomplete science has been done”.
How can the North Pole be NNW of anything? It is N of everything!
(OK, OK, it’s relative to the Geographic Pole, but it did look funny!)
The 3-6-7 band shows the ice a lot more clearly:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2011212.terra.367.4km
Back up a day or two to let the clouds move out of the way, as needed.
Yes, they are in for a very rude awakening.
The danger, as I see it, is paddling straight into moving ice packs.
One of these publicity stunts is going to result in casualties, GPS or not.
They’ve been sampling too much of their sponsors’ wares.
“……….sponsored by the whiskey company “Old Pulteney””
Andrew, Scotch whisky doesn’t have an ‘e’.
http://www.oldpulteney.com/
REPLY: So noted, fixed. Thanks, Anthony
Sorry Anthony, not ‘Andrew’. Doh.
1st Polar bear: “look Ralph, they included these nifty swizzle sticks!” 2nd Polar Bear” How ’bout that, scotch, and hors-d’œuvres ! thoughtful people these Old Puteney folks, eh?”
(after all they are Canadian bears..)
Let the Annual British Arctic Follies begin. I’ve been following the postings on their web site. They seem a bunch of pretty good ole boys in a British sort of way. They don’t take themselves too seriously. The whiskey ain’t bad either.
I love scotch. I’ll do anything for a pure malt.
Such a tragedy. My heart bleeds. I shed one tear.
They’ll be leaving soon and haven’t fed even one starving polar bear yet! Why, I’ll bet they haven’t even rescued a single drowning polar bear by pulling it into their boat!
This was never going to end well.
They’ll have plenty of time on their hands to accurately measure the melting point of sea ice. I wonder what their boat is named? Titanic II might be appropriate. Ice with your single malt, anyone?
No doubt they prepared in advance by bringing a dog sled and some mutts in the boat. I mean, they’re not idiots, right? Right?
BTW, for those who deplore satirical, mocking, or derogatory articles and comments on this, a “puzzling things” blog, rest assured that my previous comment about dog sleds was totally serial.
Hope their photoshop skills are better than their satellite imagery reading skills.
That will be the only way they successfully navigate all that “melted” ice.
I hope they have some kind of escape/rescue plan, otherwise lives may be in danger.
This has become a traditon.
Row into arctic to demonstrate the impending danger of melting polar caps.
Get stuck in ice and call for rescue.
Get rescued by evil fossil fuel guzzling monsters.
Come back to heroes welcome.
Maybe next summer someone will smear themselves with seal fat and walk slowly around Churchill to demonstrate how few polar bears there are left in the world..
You learn something new every day.
Fun Fact in the “Things that make you go HMMMMMM” category:
A graph of the speed of magnetic pole drift, with speed on the Y-axis and time on the X-axis is a is identical to Mann’s hockey stick.
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/420-year-graph-of-annual-magnetic-pole-shift.jpg
CO2? I don’t think so. This has to more than just coincidence. /sarc
Wonder if they have seen any dead polar bears floating in the water.
According to Gore they should be everywhere to be seen.
“Old Pulteney” is an ancient Gaelic expression for “some idiots will do anything for free booze.”
The last Facebook update says there is a problem with their website today. There is, but only the title page, which is now completely blank; if you link to specific parts of the site, like the one in this post to the satellite tracking page work just fine. Hmmm.
PaulH says:
July 31, 2011 at 4:16 pm
You mean like sticking close to land, where they can quickly get out of the way of marauding pack ice?
I doubt it, being that paddling upstream to the flow of Sea Ice debris isn’t the smartest thing to be doing.
Anthony, I hate to tell you but you have made an error.
Steven Goddard just posted a 1973 prediction of an ice free arctic region by 2000. So obviously there is no ice there as this is 2011 already. They had models to predict with and all you have is satellite imagery. What are you going to believe, your eyes or scientific models?
See newspaper at: http://bit.ly/rgYEGr
A rowboat in the Arctic? What could possibly go wrong?
“Data will be collected every 10 nautical miles throughout the voyage.”
“The probe will be lowered over the side around 8 times a day”
So they’re hoping for 80nmi (150km) per day, but
“according to their Facebook page, covering 40 kilometers on the first day.”
Oh dear.
Yup, unless those guys in the rowboat have an icebreaker leading the way, or there’s an “instamelt” de-icing ahead of them, they likely aren’t going anywhere near the old North Magnetic Pole circa 1996, much less the actual one.
Portage !