Guest post by Steven Goddard
From the Catlin web site today – a first hand description of what motivates the explorers, and what they are learning about Arctic warming.
Thursday, 02 Apr 2009 10:04
“Men wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”
Thousands of men (and three women) replied to Ernest Shackleton’s advertisement, which (the story goes) was placed in a London newspaper in 1913, ahead of his Antarctic expedition aboard the Endurance.
Polar expeditions have moved on in terms of technology and equipment, but the motivation and commitment to research that fuelled Shackleton and his team seem not to have altered.
“There’s a cocktail of motivational forces at work”, commented Expedition Leader Pen Hadow from the team tent, huddled over the sat-phone at the end of another long, cold day. “You can sum it up by saying we feel a commitment to represent the Arctic Ocean as an eco-system and the three of us have the skills that allow us to gather the information that will enable people to be better informed about the state of the region and its future“.
But given temperatures of -40 degrees centigrade with a wind chill factor in the minus seventies, does the motivation that fuelled the team from their warm UK base in the planning stages, diminish?
Photographer Martin Hartley who’s been crawling into a frozen sleeping back that becomes a wet sponge overnight for longer than he cares to remember, remarks “I’m getting extremely frustrated with the stupidly cold temperatures that are making my life a misery, day after day. All I can think about, 24 hours a day, is getting a new sleeping bag on the next re-supply”.
But Hadow says he’s speaking for all three team members, himself, Hartley and Ann Daniels, when he concludes, “We’ve absolutely no regrets about being here. Given that it’s so awful, our commitment to the research and our motivation is in fact what keeps us going”.
With a team currently preparing the next re-supply, Hartley should get his new sleeping bag within the next few days.
What I find interesting is the use of the word “But” and “stupidly cold” highlighted in red above. It appears that what they are experiencing on the ground is not what they were expecting to find.
“The team covered a staggering 16.7km today, the biggest distance achieved to date. By covering so much distance since the last resupply (134.5km in 13 days), the team have observed the ice they are crossing is getting significantly older and thicker“
So it is extremely cold and they are finding old, thick ice. That does not sound like the sub-tropical Arctic as portrayed by The Guardian.
Flashback to February, 2008 OSLO, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) — The polar cap in the Arctic may well disappear this summer due to the global warming, Dr. Olav Orheim, head of the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, said on Friday.
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How about this gem from today:
“The ice has been particularly active again today, so much so that during an impromptu photo-shoot between Pen and Martin, Ann had to raise the alarm as the ice they were standing broke away and started to disintegrate. The photo-shoot ended as abruptly as it had started and the team continued on their way.”
Given that they claim the temperature is -35degC will they at least admit that it isn’t global warming that’s breaking up the ice?
Rather than standing around in circles holding hands, I prefer a more muscular approach to the North Pole
http://www.captainscomments.com/images/637-NP1987.jpg
And note, the ice … the ice … it’s …. it’s … melting!! In 1987! OMG!!
As a cold-water scuba diver, I have a thing for dive machines at the North Pole. It’s a very busy place!!!
OK My last posting on this thread – hey, it’s my entertainment 🙂
Being Canadian, I can make the simple statement:
Ice Bad. Warm Good.
Why would anyone want to prevent mild warming? (Rhetorical question; I know these people are comfortable, middle-class suburbanites who live where it rarely gets cold) They clearly don’t live in Canada.
Did anyone read this one…
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer – 1 hr 2 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Arctic sea ice is melting so fast most of it could be gone in 30 years. A new analysis of changing conditions in the region, using complex computer models of weather and climate, says conditions that had been forecast by the end of the century could occur much sooner.
A change in the amount of ice is important because the white surface reflects sunlight back into space. When ice is replaced by dark ocean water that sunlight can be absorbed, warming the water and increasing the warming of the planet.
The finding adds to concern about climate change caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, a problem that has begun receiving more attention in the Obama administration and is part of the G20 discussions under way in London.
“Due to the recent loss of sea ice, the 2005-2008 autumn central Arctic surface air temperatures were greater than 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above” what would be expected, the new study reports.
That amount of temperature increase had been expected by the year 2070.
The new report by Muyin Wang of the Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean and James E. Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, appears in Friday’s edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
They expect the area covered by summer sea ice to decline from about 2.8 million square miles normally to 620,000 square miles within 30 years.
Last year’s summer minimum was 1.8 million square miles in September, second lowest only to 2007 which had a minimum of 1.65 million square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The Center said Arctic sea ice reached its winter maximum for this year at 5.8 million square miles on Feb. 28. That was 278,000 square miles below the 1979-2000 average making it the fifth lowest on record. The six lowest maximums since 1979 have all occurred in the last six years.
Overland and Wang combined sea-ice observations with six complex computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to reach their conclusions. Combining several computer models helps avoid uncertainties caused by natural variability.
Much of the remaining ice would be north of Canada and Greenland, with much less between Alaska and Russia in the Pacific Arctic.
“The Arctic is often called the Earth’s refrigerator because the sea ice helps cool the planet by reflecting the sun’s radiation back into space,” Wang said in a statement. “With less ice, the sun’s warmth is instead absorbed by the open water, contributing to warmer temperatures in the water and the air.”
The study was supported by the NOAA Climate Change Program Office, the Institute for the Study of the Ocean and Atmosphere and the U.S. Department of Energy.”
It never ends… but last year North pole was supposed to be free of Ice by 2015… Hilarious no?
Does the tech actually not exist to measure ice depth from orbit, or does it exist but it hasn’t been put in orbit? I’m sort of thinking of some sonar stuff that has been done to “look beneath the sands” of the Sahara, but I don’t know if it would be applicable here.
Robert Wood (15:11:02) :
Think of the nightmare it will be when we will be forced to move down in the States when the glaciers arrive.
Carl Zimmer, writing at Discover blog, is attacking George Will again. “George Will, Now With Misleading Links” states:
One of the more egregious lines from George Will’s recent columns on global warming is the claim that real data shows that warnings about a rise in the average global temperature are wrong. He writes: “According to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.”
The secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization himself, Michael Jarraud, decided he had to write to the Washington Post to tell them George Will is wrong.
Follow the link for Jarraud’s letter.
A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years?
“A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years?
Muyin Wang
Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
James E. Overland
Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle, Washington, USA
September 2008 followed 2007 as the second sequential year with an extreme summer Arctic sea ice extent minimum. Although such a sea ice loss was not indicated until much later in the century in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment Report, many models show an accelerating decline in the summer minimum sea ice extent during the 21st century. Using the observed 2007/2008 September sea ice extents as a starting point, we predict an expected value for a nearly sea ice free Arctic in September by the year 2037. The first quartile of the distribution for the timing of September sea ice loss will be reached by 2028. Our analysis is based on projections from six IPCC models, selected subject to an observational constraints. Uncertainty in the timing of a sea ice free Arctic in September is determined based on both within‐model contributions from natural variability and between‐model differences.
Received 6 February 2009; accepted 5 March 2009; published 3 April 2009.
Citation: Wang, M., and J. E. Overland (2009), A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L07502, doi:10.1029/2009GL037820. ”
That’s real fast tracking isn’t it? Especially considering this looks like a re-hash of their 2007 similar paper…
Slightly off topic, but within the past couple of hours, the NSICD finally updated the trend graphs for the Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Trends to include data through March 2009… compared to the holy grail 1979-2000 “average” (which excludes 2001-2008 data in the averaging, of course…which is my constant gripe that they throw out 30% of the data since 1979 when calculating the average (mean).
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html
Arctic now at -2.7% per decade (last month it was trending at -2.8% and last year it was -11% per decade)
Antarctic now trending up at +4.7% per decade, up from +2.8% through February.
Nice recovery going, eh?
Big win in favor of Climate Skeptic views on Cap % Trade thanks to the Thune Amendment:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/dems_failure_to_fast_track_cap.html
See also http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/the-thune-amendment-5096
The Thune Amendment
April 1st, 2009
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
“The ability of Congressional legislation on cap and trade to result in actual emissions reductions was dealt a serious blow yesterday. An Amendment was introduced by Senator John Thune (R-SD) on the Budget Resolution and its text is as follows:
To amend the deficit-neutral reserve fund for climate change legislation to require that such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices.
What is this? Climate change legislation cannot increase electricity or gasoline prices? The entire purpose of cap and trade is in fact to increase the costs of carbon-emitting sources of energy, which dominate US energy consumption. The Thune Amendment thus undercuts the entire purpose of cap and trade.
What was the vote on the Thune Amendment? 89-8 in favor of the Amendment, 48 Democrats and 41 Republicans. Only 8 members of the Senate were willing to go on record saying that they support the purpose of a cap and trade bill, to make carbon-emitting energy more expensive. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) voted for the Thune Amendment had this to say:
Any kind of cap-and-trade system that comes forward will not raise energy and gas prices.
The Thune Amendment effectively kills cap and trade as a mechanism for reducing emissions. I have little doubt that the legislation will go forward, and it likely will pass in some form and do many things. Its just that reducing emissions won’t be among them. Cap and trade is dead, but the charade will go on.
For those who may be wondering, this post is not an April Fools Joke”.
This amandment has two major effects:
1. It put a big bomb under the Obama Budget.
2. It puts a big bomb under the UN Climate Congress in Copenhagen planned for December 2009.
I thank America for this act of sanity in difficult times.
Hopefully Obama and his clan of “Super Greenies” get to their senses and back off from renewed attempts to cash in on biggest scam in history.
Maybe someone could e-mail this to them, then they can come home and get warm. It’s from the Guardian even. (Apologies mods, if I shouldn’t have posted it twice – I thought it was important enough to put the link in the Tipping Point thread also). AGW RIP.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/03/g20-gordon-brown-global-economy
“The transatlantic compromise between America and Europe led to a jump in shares in London and New York. The FTSE index closed up more than 4% at 4,124.97. The deal won praise from business leaders, as well as anti-poverty campaigners, but dismayed the green lobby with its lack of measures to combat climate change.
British government officials lost their battle to include a commitment to spend a substantial share of the economic stimulus on low-carbon recovery projects.
Vague low-carbon language and climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December were relegated to two paragraphs at the communique’s end.”
The Australian Government also hits a wall of opposition on cap and tax:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/cap-and-tax-dead-in-us-aussie-senates.html
I just came across this article on AOL. Is this the same team? I seems they are using panties as a wind sock to navigate their way north.
http://www.lemondrop.com/2009/04/01/lacy-undies-save-the-day-for-arctic-explorers/?icid=main|htmlws-main-c1|dl5|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemondrop.com%2F2009%2F04%2F01%2Flacy-undies-save-the-day-for-arctic-explorers%2F
Cryosphere Today in its March 30th statement on the 2009 maximum ice extent describes it as the 5th lowest extent of the satellite record! Since the “consensus” was surprised by 2008’s and 2009’s expanded extent it is patently dishonest to report it this way. Surely if 2010 rebounds further it would be getting to be a stretch to say it is the sixth lowest, and so on. Even if one believes it to be temporary, one should not fear to state that the ice has rebounded the last two years. One can see that even if New York Harbour and the Bosphorus freezes up next year, they will simply rank the year as part of the AGW trend.
Thanks, Aron for posting this:
Aron (08:11:24) :
“The latest attempt to denigrate dissenters – http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/01/climate-change-sceptics?commentpage=1&commentposted=1”
I checked this Simon Singh missive (where he slanders skeptics as ‘numpties’) and offered this:
“truegreenredneck – 02 Apr 09, 11:38pm (about 1 hour ago)
how can one take somebody seriously who writes:
“But what about those who still do not believe in climate change? Who are they and how can they be persuaded to see sense?”
Climate Change is not a matter of belief – it always happens, sometimes slowly, at other times faster and occasionally abruptly, catastrophically. Climate realists argue that CO2 is a minor driver of climate change based on well-established facts and that Kyoto-type agreements won’t make an iota of difference other than fattening the delegates, politicians, ENGOs and the main stream media pundits that attend and report on the sit-ins in Bali, Poznan and Copenhagen. The global tax payer is being ruined by the apocalyptic orgy of adherents of the “hot air” cult.
In short: Climate realists (AGW skeptics) do have a great deal of sense and don’t need to be shown the light by disingenuous numpties like Simon Singh.
Global Sea Ice above 1979 average:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/global-sea-ice-above-30-year-average.html
I begin to wonder about the timing of this expedition. If they were supposed to send back endless reports of melting ice and the end of the Arctic as we know it wouldn’t waiting a month or two for the break-up have been a better idea.
Were they supposed to get out onto the ice just as the break-up was due to start and the weather just hasn’t cooperated?
Either way it looks for the moment as though all they are proving is that the Arctic is a seriously cold place and not a playground. Not, I suspect, what the armchair environmentalists wanted to see.
The worry here is that the team will feel pressured not to let Guardian readers everywhere down by leaving and getting back to safety. It was clear from the preamble that the “mission” was to prove that GW was destroying the Arctic. Having to leave because it is -50ºC, becoming very dangerous and you can’t find any evidence hardly furthers “the cause”. On the other hand neither does getting killed.
Lets hope they make the right choice.
@ur momisugly(15:03:03) Robert Wood posted a link to a photo of subs visiting the North Pole, dated 18 May 1987.
Two others can be found here: http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08664.htm
But not that one! That one is used here:
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
This John Daly post has other interesting photos of subs at the NP on different dates, along with other images. An interesting read.
OT, but Roy Spencer has a good explanation of the greenhouse effect on his website.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-the-greenhouse-effect/
Am I missing something? I cannot find a lat/long of their position. Surely that would be the most basic data to publish.
I do see where they say they have made 182 kilometers in 33 days, leaving an estimated 752 kilometers to the Pole.
Slow going. According to their “100 day” schedule they expected to be there by early June. I’m sure things will pick up as Spring arrives, but this seems like a slow start.
I think we need to remember this is “Business” to the participants as well.
Anne is a motivational speaker.
Pen is also on the speaking tour.
Martin is an Arctic photographer and presumably getting paid for the journey.
They have to stay out as long as possible (and hope that the weather changes) or many future bucks will be lost.
As Martin and Pen have said “there is 20 million other things they would rather be doing”, but there is also 20 million in future earnings at stake if tomorrow the weather changes and they make it all the way to the north pole.
Just think of the motivational speaking notes that are being written right now (versus thrown in the garbage if they have to give up).
And there is substantial advertising and sponsorship funds on their jackets and on the sleds and on the website.
This ice post inspires the following: Let’s assume that at some point in the future the Arctic ice does open up, and also, that that might be bad for polar bears. Some have suggested that in contrast to trying to alter climate via GHG reductions direct action to combat problems would be a better approach.
Next it is thought there is a lot of plastic floating around, and around, in the oceans. Also, some fish stocks are thought to be declining and this, presumably, will lead to underutilized ships and crew.
So, why not retrofit these ships to take on floating-ocean-plastic and process it into ice berg-like shapes to be dropped at appropriate locations as polar bear habitat?
A side benefit of this is that the plastic will not have to be disposed of on land. And even if the ice never melts, we have still gotten the plastic out of the ocean gyres, and if fitted with a tracking device could help monitor ice movements. What’s not to love?
“What satellite-based sensing system can be used to measure Ice Cap thickness?”
altimeter… the ice is floating, thicker ice, more above ocean mean
Bill Illis (17:21:20) :
I think we need to remember this is “Business” to the participants as well.
Anne is a motivational speaker.
Pen is also on the speaking tour.
Martin is an Arctic photographer and presumably getting paid for the journey.
They have to stay out as long as possible (and hope that the weather changes) or many future bucks will be lost.
As Martin and Pen have said “there is 20 million other things they would rather be doing”, but there is also 20 million in future earnings at stake if tomorrow the weather changes and they make it all the way to the north pole.
Just think of the motivational speaking notes that are being written right now (versus thrown in the garbage if they have to give up).
And there is substantial advertising and sponsorship funds on their jackets and on the sleds and on the website.
Theme for tonight’s motivational talk: believing in yourself, just like believing in climate change, can take you anywhere you want to go.
Obviuusly Al Gore did not get his message across !
If they had waited 5 more years they could have sailed or paddled to an ice free pole and avoided all this discomfort.