Northwest Passage: still impassable

Andy Revkin’s NYT DotEarth blog has three recent posts about Arctic ice extent including an animation graphic of the last 25 years. I believe I can see the effects of the 1999 Gakkel Ridge volcanic eruption appear as a ‘Great Blue Spot’ of thinner ice, surrounded by thicker ice. Andy’s has consulted experts who minimize the effect of the volcano on ice, but the most honest among them admit that they don’t know for sure.
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The above comments all point to something that is never mentioned with the NorthWest Passage when the media talks about it becoming passable. Even if it does melt enough in some or all years, it only late-August to mid-September that it is passable.
It is never going to be a shipping route, even if global warming actually occurrs at some point. No shipping company is going to sail up to the northern tip of Baffin Island in August, wait there for a few weeks to see which one of a dozen passages opens up and sail through at top speed, hoping to not get caught in ice flow movement. They are not going to risk millions of cargo on this fickle freeze, unthaw, ice shift, strait.
It is a fantasy. The NW Passage is for ice-breakers, a few adventure yachts and local Inuit boats (in late-August to mid-September, for the rest of the year, it is for snowmobiles.)

Sean wrote: “During WWII a Royal Canadian Mounted Police vessel, St Roch, took 28 months to cross from west to east completing the journey in 1942. In 1944 she took only 86 days to complete the return trip. From 27 months to 86 days? That’s GOT to be proof of Global Warming. ”
I’m not certain if this is a joke or not, but If it’s not a joke can you answer the following:
1. can you cite a reference?
2. if the passage from west to east took 28 months, were they doing anything besides just taking passage? That is, were they charting unknown areas or doing some other type of exploration?
3. what were the weather conditions during each trip?
4. did the return trip take the same route?
Curious people like to know these things!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com

And yes, I realize that it is just barely July now and the minimum ice point hasn’t arrived yet, but if last year didn’t have a melted north pole and so far we have more ice than last year, I really don’t think that this year will be the year of the ice-less north pole.

OK, I got a hot question for you, Anthony. One of the experts that Andy Revkin consulted about the ‘Great Blue Spot’ appearing over the volcano in 1999 says that the region is obscured by clouds so he can’t say what was on the surface. But, if the volcanic plume did break the surface then you would see clouds form right there. Can you ask among your meteorologist friends if there was anything unusual about the clouds over the Gakkel Ridge area in January of 1999? Please.
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REPLY: Meet you halfway. I’m awfully busy today, so if you can get some sat photos of the period I’ll pass them around for a look. You can usually tell what type of clouds they are form sat photos.

“…..When fantasy and reality collide, reality will always win out.”
True, but the NY Times and the Guardian will report that fantasy won anyway.

Of course the NW Passage is still impassable. It’s early July still.
No one is predicting an “ice free Arctic Sea” this summer. Some are predicting an ice free North Pole. Ice melt around the pole is not symmetrical – far from it. It is influenced by the shape of the basin, the winds, where ice piles up, the distribution of first-year and multi-year ice, and so on. The prediction is that the sea AT the north pole will be ice free – everyone acknowledges that there will still be a lot of ice in the arctic basin, even if the pole itself melts this year.
Jack Simmons siad:
“As some of the ice retreats from the coastal regions of Greenland today, some of the Viking farms are being revealed, for the first time in “recorded history”.”
ONE farm was uncovered, and it was not uncovered by retreating ice. It was buried under sand in a river bed, and uncovered as the sand washed out.
Viking farming was always tenuous, and the vikings dependent on hunted seal meat in most years. Poor farms regularly lost all breeding stock in winter, and had to be re-stocked from farms in more advantageous areas. Only a handful of the farms were ever able to raise cattle, and they had the smallest cattle recorded in any human settlement.
Today Greenland grass farmers run a thriving dairy economy, they are getting two hay cuttings a year for the first time ever, they are growing crops the vikings could not. The ag evidence is consistent with Greenland being as warm or warmer than when the vikings were there.
No one says there aren’t going to be wins in AGW-induced change. The argument is that the net is going to be very strongly on the loss side, with sea level rise and loss or expensive impact on low elevation infrastructure and lands, degradation of ecosystems and loss of accompanying ecosystem services, ag climate belt shifts with desertification of some highly productive farmlands and shifts of staple crop belts onto less rich farmland, and so on.

Mike Keep, nice picture, but the same can be seen as far back as 1959
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm
check out pictures 24k and 70k. They both show submarines surfaced in open water at the North Pole. The open leads are also called “polynyas”, a term which goes back quite a while, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynya
Yes, I know, pinch of salt time, but what is there at least seems reasonable.

From Andrew W:
“except for one misleading headline (the ABC I think) all of those articles were refering to the possible melting of a large area of thin one season ice that covers an area around the north pole”
This paraphrasing of the intent of these articles is much more vague and forgiving than the tone of the actual articles. Nobody sells headlines about maybe, possibly melting ice somewhere up north. Hansen certainly doesn’t bother to add this kind of uncertainty to his statements anymore. Lets break this down: 1.) Is the ice AT THE NORTH POLE single year ice (i.e. it was ice free last year)? http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html 2.) Is it unheard of/unusual to find open water at the North Pole? (see Oldjim’s link above) 3.) Is there proof that global warming is causing the disappearance of Arctic Ice? Will this be supported by the behavior of the ice this year, and if not what other factor is interfering with AGW? 4.) Is the ice at the North Pole the thickest/oldest ice, and therefore an indicator of an alarming climate shift? http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/sid/IMB/thickcli.htm
The intent of this post is to point out the ridiculous hype that is being trumpeted by activist scientists and journalists. Andrew W, if you can’t see that you’re wearing your straw hat over your eyes.

It will be interesting to see how far down the ice gets at minimum this time before it climbs back up. Its recovery last year from minimum to maximum looked to be about 10% greater than other years going back to 1978 (as in the climb back up was a 10% greater climb than in other seasons, not that there was 10% more ice at the top of the climb in terms of sq km). However, if this year’s minimum is not as deep as last year and if the weather this coming winter repeats itself, and if the climb back up is as much as it was last time, there will be more ice in the Arctic. Lots more. Maybe more than in any other year since 1978.

So, Ice, what caused the MWP, cow/sheep toots? You seem to have missed the point about Greenland being as warm or warmer than today.
No one says there aren’t going to be wins in AGW-induced change. You’ll forgive us, I hope, if we haven’t kept track of what AGWers are currently saying. The words to the song you people are singing keep changing, although the tune itself tends to stay the same (except, perhaps for the shift to manmade Climate Change instead of just Warming – a whole different key there, or perhaps the same, just an octave higher). Yeah, we get the alarmist bit – catastrophic sea level rise, ecosystem degradation, climate belt shifts, hurricanes (wait – are you people still saying hurricanes caused by AGW), fires, droughts, floods, tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. etc. Amazing what C02 – no, strike that, Man’s Evil C02 (different from Nature’s, and far more powerful, since it only contributes about 3%) can do. Did you know that C02 is plant food, and the rise in C02 of the past century is responsible for about a 15% increase in plant growth? Indeed, we need MORE C02, not less. But, since we’re not contributing much percentage-wise, it isn’t up to us. Where did most of the increased C02 come from? From warming, which creates off-gassing, primarily from the oceans. What caused the warming? I’m glad you asked. It’s that big yellow thing in the sky, which oddly enough goes through cycles. We are now, by all appearances going into a cooling period, and very likely a significant one. Like it cold? Good.

McGrats,
the St. Roche became frozen in the ice on the trip west. The return trip had little problem.
Here are some more links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Roch
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic46-1-82.pdf
http://www.hazegray.org/features/stroch/stroch.htm