impassable
im·pass·a·ble [im-pas-uh-buhl]
–adjective
1. not passable; not allowing passage over, through, along, etc.: Heavy snow made the roads impassable.
2. unable to be surmounted: an impassable obstacle to further negotiations.
There has been a lot of hype this year citing data which is suggesting that we’ll be able to navigate the Northwest Passage and some even so bold as to suggest a completely ice free Arctic Sea. You could say: “A picture is always worth 1000 data points.”
I’d say “impassable” fits this picture pretty well:
Image rotated- click for source image. Credit: Terra/MODIS true color
Some reference views to help you get your bearings, here is what the area would be like if “ice free” as some folks are predicting to happen this summer:
And here is the overall photo area with more familiar landmasses visible:
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[Snip] Just because it is hot in the south in July doesn’t mean the ice has melted in the north by July. Maximum ice melt takes place in late August [Snip]. It is late August now. The passage is open again for the second year in a row… and the second year ever on record. Wishing something isn’t so, won’t stop it from being.
Reply (from JG): Please watch the name calling. As you can see from the edited comment, your point still comes across.
The sea ice concentration chart at the NSIDC website showed clear wide channels through McClure Strait and Parry Channel on Sep 7 and 8.
The NE passage along Russia opened earlier.
It is amusing to see the unfounded speculation about the deep water NW passage opening in previous years, before 2007. Never happened, at least not anytime in the previous 5 centuries. The Parry Passage got it’s name long before Amundsen made the first ever transit of the southern, shallow water NW passage from 1903 to 1906. He only made it part way each summer before ice locked up his ship again.
Apart from submarines, every transit has been recorded. There aren’t a lot of them, but the number is increasing every decade as the ice thins out and disappears from more of the arctic seas every year.
http://benmuse.typepad.com/arctic_economics/2008/07/northwest-passage-transits.html
http://www.arctic.gov/files/AMTW_book.pdf
Apart from saving 6 mega meters in travel distance between Europe and Asia the NW passage will be able to be sailed by very large bulk carriers which don’t fit in the Panama or Suez canal, or even in the English Channel.
Sooo, it could have happened before all this “unprecedented catastrophic warming”…
Never happened, at least not anytime in the previous 5 centuries.
Well, sure, but that was the Little Ice Age.
There were a couple of crossings in the 40s, IIRC, but I don’t know which passage they used.
We simply do not know the future of Arctic ice. We are still spitballing over the effects of particulates which are said to cause anything from 20% to 90+% of Arctic melt (depending on whether you use NASA or skeptic sources) and have nothing directly to do with CO2. We don’t even have decent surface stations up there (and satellites can’t cover it either).
I wouldn’t be investing in NW Passage, Inc., just yet.
“Sooo, it could have happened before all this”
Maybe it is just me, but that sounds like a theory without any facts to support it. If the facts don’t fit your theory perhaps you should find another which matches observed facts.
This web page needs a new title. The Canadian Ice Service declared Parry Channel and McClure Strait Navigable by non ice-breaking ships on 2008 Sept 4. Second time in History, and the second year in a row. It has cleared even more in the last week and the melt hasn’t stopped yet.
Vikings never made it much farther west than Greenland in the Medieval warm period. A few artifacts have been found a bit of the way along the Coast.
Asian artifacts such as coins show up along the west coast, but not in the arctic coast going east to Hudson Bay.
No evidence of sea traffic either direction before 1906. There was a lot of wealth in Asia which Europeans sought to reach by sailing the arctic for the past 5 centuries without making it through the ice. Now clear sailing in the arctic is becoming a predictable arctic event.
The Inuit have been observing arctic weather as a matter of life and death for a millenium. Their oral tradition includes years without summers, but no summers without ice.
British Navy expeditions searching for the doomed Franklin expedition didn’t put much faith in native accounts of what happened to the crew of the ships, but the native descriptions of cannibalism among the despairing sailors were accurate.
Archaeological evidence gives good insight into the Inuit lifestyle from the time the arrived in the arctic around the year 900 Common Era.
So it does. And so does the evidence of Viking western-style agriculture in Greenland. (Settlements as far north as the 70th parallel.)
But actually, one can’t say either way. Saying “for the first time in history” gives an entirely false impression of extent of knowledge. Informative qualifiers are necessary, sayeth the history biz.
Same with sunspots and hurricanes. In the Good Old Days, many, if not most of them, went unreported (there being limited means with which to observe them and less rigor in recording them). Unless one wants to reduce measurements to contemporary means, comparison is meaningless (and even then, highly problematic).
Would the Canadian Merchant Marine (had there been one in 1000 AD) have declared the NW passage “open” during the MWP? Maybe. Maybe not. Quien sabe?
October 2 and it is still clear sailing along the Northeast passage, eh!
You really do need to change the title of this web page.
The USA National Snow and Ice Data center noted that the summer of 2008 is likely a record minimum for arctic sea ice volume, in addition to being the 2nd lowest surface extent on record. That old La Nina she ain’t what she used to be. Even the La Nina cold end of the oscillation can hardly make a dint in the relentless warming of the arctic.
Antarctic ice extent has been below average since July, and has been declining since the beginning of September.
Pretty hard to argue with the observed fact that climate is warming, but some folks still do. I wonder if they have some sort of affiliation with the flat earth society.
REPLY: The title was correct at the time it was written, thus will remain unchanged. We don’t do revisionist history here. And no were aren’t part of the flat earth society, your comment is juvenile, but typical for persons such as your self that demand others change their views (or writings) for them. 2008 arctic sea ice extent came out above 2007, by 9%, the season is starting again, 2009 will be even more ice.
The Northwest Passage is not still impassable. Several vessels have passed through it recently.