Note: One of the many integrity issues with Catlin is that none of their photos can be dated. Even embedded EXIF information (including date/time done by most digital cameras in use today) has been removed from gallery photos on the website. For all we know this photo above they included in their just released report could have been taken during training. The high photographic angle suggests the photographer was standing on something, but what? Further, no raw data is offered in their first report, we are expected to take it on faith I suppose. Given their admittedly fraudulent biometric readings, and lack of candor on their ice radar, how can we trust anything they publish? So far for a “science” mission I remain unimpressed with the effort or the transparency. – Anthony
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Catlin Report Confirms that Satellite Data is Accurate
Catlin just came out with their first ice report (PDF)
The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first‐year ice. Satellite imagery of the area, especially passive microwave imagery (e.g. AMSR and QuikScat data), indicates the area is indeed covered primarily with first‐year ice and a scattering of multi‐year ice floes.
The report summary is :
The results collected in the first month of the Catlin Arctic Survey point to an unexpected lack of thicker Multiyear Ice.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png
This begs the question – why were they expecting multi-year ice, when satellite data showed otherwise? As reported on WUWT, NSIDC data from February showed their route map starting on first year ice.
If they were looking for older ice, there were many obvious (and shorter) routes they could have chosen. What made them choose this route, which was apparently too long to be completed and which started on first year ice?
Most of the report is regurgitated satellite data, but there are a couple of particularly interesting items:
One further consideration, when interpreting the ice thickness measurements made by the CAS team, is navigational bias. The team systematically seeks out flatter ice because it is easier to travel over and camp on.
and
The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first‐year ice.
In conclusion:
- They seek out “flat” (implying thinner and younger) ice
- They planned on being on multi-year ice, even though the satellites showed that their route is on first year ice.
- The first year ice they are on is “thick.”
- Their measurements agree closely with satellite data.
In other words, they could have been home enjoying a pint in sunny England, and waited to see what happens to the ice this summer.
Expedition Leader Pen Hadow who remembers feeling angry a few days into the expedition because he felt that, between expeditions, his memory had tricked him over the cold.
“Although I’ve been here before, I wasn’t able to hold the memory of just how uncomfortable, in an almost surreal sense, it really is”, he says. “When you’re warm, at home, you can tell yourself how awful it’s going to be, but when you get here, the shock of it hits you all over again and you really can’t believe you’ve allowed yourself to go through it again“.
Pub garden during the hot summer of 2007
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I have several blogs on the geologic history of Antarctic and Arctic ice. at
http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/
If anyone is interested.
Maybe there was a better way to get there –
http://www.4x4offroads.com/magnetic-north-pole-offroad.html
Well, temperatures are up to -16C now at the pole (ish. buoy is at 86.161°N ) and rising at a fairly rapid rate (9 degrees over the last 4 days). At this rate of rise, the Arctic Ocean will be boiling in 52 days. 😉
Earlier it was reported the ice depth they were finding was 6-7 feet, I believe. That pic above show an ice drill about 15-18 feet, I’d say. A little overkill for such “thin” ice don’t you think?
you people are all just jealous you can’t stay so immaculately clean in the field
No data.
No new data.
Would it help me to know if I am supposed to see data files or not?
I guess it takes some folks a while to catch up.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/04/wandering_across_the_arctic.php
Glenn Morton 16:33:52
That’s a nice blog you have there. Hmmm. The Baltic Dry Index is falling again. That’s not good.
========================================
O/T
I may have missed a comment about this the past couple weeks, but it looks like there’s a new player in town — Climate Depot. Looks to be formatted along the lines of Drudge Report, for the AGW skeptic community; heade up by Marc Morano Check it out.
http://climatedepot.com/
Slightly OT – you may be interested to hear Dr Ian Allison –
Glaciologist, Head of the Australian Antarctic Division’s Ice, Ocean, Atmosphere and Climate Program – wriggle his way around the report that the eastern antarctic ice is expanding.
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/bst_20090420_0645.mp3
I’m sure someone has already brought up the question, but wouldn’t “unexpectedly thick first-year ice” mean that “it’s a LOT colder than ‘normal’” and, by default, mean that the Arctic has decided to ignore Mann, Hansen, Gore, Steig, et al and go ahead follow the Sun’s lead and rush headlong into an era of bitterly cold
weatherclimate, CO2 levels be darned? (Not sure if “d*mned” would get snipped.)As an aside, would it be too harsh to suggest that, perhaps, the photographer who took Pen’s mysteriously-redacted picture might have been standing on a polar bear’s shoulders to get that high-angle shot?
Hadow is enjoying the warmer -30′, though his cup of hot water tossed into the air freezes instantly.
“It’s . . pretty,” he says,” . . . like children’s glitter.”
Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark – when the Nazi, Toht, watches as the Ark is opened – right before God’s wrath makes his face melt ?
“It’s beautiful,” he says.
I’m picturing Hadow transfigured as ice glitter.
Sorry, but this scam in pursuit of capping the AGW case – is making me mad.
It’s 45° in northwest Ohio and there are snow showers on order for Tuesday night.
Illigettimi.
(Moderator. Go ahead – snip, but hey! – it’s the language of scholars;0)
Okay. Maybe someone has already thought of this, and perhaps someone has already said this in comments but…exactly WHY is the lack of multi-year ice a shocking find (just shocking, I tell you!) after the screaming, moaning, and doomsaying about the Arctic in the summer of 2007? That was a real dip in what we are used to seeing for summer ice, though I am not sure I would call it extreme, but it was certainly noticeable. Yet if that is the case, we’re not even 2 years removed from that event. And they are stunned (just stunned, I tell you!) at the lack of multi-year ice? Uhhh…. Have they been asleep the past 2 years?
Like others, I expect whatever findings they do send back to line up exactly with what the Warmist camp is screaming about. Given the complete lack of verifiable data, I won’t even say that I expect them not to make it the entire way because I can’t say as I believe that they are actually there. There’s basically no data given or available that proves that they were actually there and that absolutely could not be derived from satellites and other remote measuring devices. They could be holed up at some Caribbean resort for all I know while all of this is going on, except I guess they might want to stay out of the sun. It wouldn’t look good to come back from the mean ol’ cold Arctic with a tan now would it? Since the debate is over, and the Arctic is going to be ice-free in 5 years (thank you for both points, Al Gore!) I don’t even expect their measurements to be open to outside verification beyond the buddy-system of the Warmist camp. And won’t we all be just shocked (shocked, I tell you!) when that happens?
Tim Channon Well if this were March 21st and they were at the pole the sun would be just on the horizon and the shadow would go from miles until it blurred (burred?) or diffracted into nothingness. Come June 21st and if they were at the pole they would have the sun 23 degrees above the horizon all day long. Trouble is that I don’t believe that is a shadow. Neither the man nor the other equipment seem to be casting shadows. My suspicion is that its a line in the snow made when they assembled the drill. Sorry. – SL
Tim:
Using The Sky v 5 level II, and inputing today’s date, noon, 84.5 N, I get an altitude of 16 deg 41minutes looking due South.
Inputting 60 N, same date & time, looking due South, I get 40 deg 41 minutes altitude.
I’m hazarding a guess that the light shadow from top of pole to ground is from that altitude relevant to the Sun.
60 N fits the bill.
No way to tell if it’s another copter shining a light down or not.
If anything these clowns say means anything, then I interpret,
predominantly thick first‐year ice.
to mean the first year ice they encountered was thicker than anticipated, presumably thicker than the satellite data says. Which would mean they weren’t confirming the satellite measurements.
The image is 510 x 337 saved to my PC.
640 x 480 would be a standard vid-cam output.
The image is also vignetted, making for a perfect inverted U shape in the center. I would think it is clipped, as 510 x 337 pixels isn’t exaclty a standard cmos or ccd output. Perhaps there are chips like that, but I haven’t come across any.
The RGB breakdown gives the shadow strong in the Blue, weak in the Red, with Green in between. Does that tell us anything?
REPLY: I format images to 510 wide for the blog, original is embedded in the PDF report – Anthony
I raised the question in a couple of posts ago. Admittedly, I am not willing to runa round waiving my arms in teh air yelling “fraud”. But, we have no evidence of them actually being there at all.
Only a sworn affidavite from air the supply company will put to rest this nagging nag.
This photo was taken from the air.
Robert Bateman (15:17:33) :
According to the link above they are going to reach the Pole in 80 days. If I read the PDF maps right, they will not make it due to open waters.
Shouldn’t they have a kayuk to paddle about in?
You’re missing the whole point fo teh exercise – the dramatic resuce footage of them being lifted from the melting ice-free Arctic ocean.
OT: Do they ever bathe? If so, how. If not they must itch a lot.
Reuters just spread this around the globe in their Planet Ark Bulletin “Your Daily Guide to helping the Planet”:
“Lack Of Permanent Arctic Ice Surprises Explorers
Date: 20-Apr-09
Country: CANADA
Author: David Ljunggren”
excerpts:
“OTTAWA – The head of a British team walking to the North Pole on a mission to gauge how fast Arctic ice sheets are melting said on Friday he was surprised by how little permanent ice he had found so far.
Pen Hadow and two other adventurers set off in early March on a 1,000-km (620-mile) trek from Canada’s Arctic to the North Pole. The team was set down in an area where scientists had been sure there would be permanent multiyear ice.
But so far, the average depth of the ice has been just under 1.8 metres (6 feet), suggesting they are finding predominantly new first-year ice that is likely to melt in summer months.”
It’s infuriating how this drivel is disseminated, to be picked up by assignment editors all over the world…
the current WUWT thread has abundantly demonstrated that satellite data clearly indicated that first-year ice was to be expected during their early trek – and now this blatant deception. And talking about permanent multiyear ice – only land-fast ice is semi-permanent, as many submarine missions have demonstrated and as is well-known from traditional ecological knowledge…
shocking and infuriating! I will try to find the authors email address…
here is the complete story: http://planetark.org/wen/52513
Tim re the shadow angle. How did you get that? I don’t see it in the photo above. In any case if it is a shadow, it certainly does look like too high a vertical angle for 85N. One can’t calculate the angle unless one knows the distance and elevation of the camera from the scene. The shadow line would, of course be foreshortened, but lets see if a large benefit of the doubt is assumed what we get. If it is assumed that the length of the shadow is three times the apparent length, which seems generous, then the angle (tan angle at the end of the shadow is 5.7cm/12) is about 26degrees. The shadow should be about 6 times its apparent length to give us 15 degrees or so. This is either is not a shadow or they are about 60 to 70 degrees N at best – I agree with Robert Bateman 17:42:03
Bobby Lane (17:38:44) :
“Okay. Maybe someone has already thought of this, and perhaps someone has already said this in comments but…exactly WHY is the lack of multi-year ice a shocking find (just shocking, I tell you!) after the screaming, moaning, and doomsaying about the Arctic in the summer of 2007? That was a real dip in what we are used to seeing for summer ice, though I am not sure I would call it extreme, but it was certainly noticeable. Yet if that is the case, we’re not even 2 years removed from that event. And they are stunned (just stunned, I tell you!) at the lack of multi-year ice? Uhhh…. Have they been asleep the past 2 years?”
Steve Goddard covered this pretty well in a thread here a few days ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/15/why-third-year-arctic-ice-will-increase-next-year/
Tim and Robert
here’s the shadow cast by a vertical pole at 84N, 140W between 6am – 6pm – 20/4/09
the arrow is due north.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/gatlin.wmv
Suppose the Arctic were totally ice-free at the beginning of winter. Then this should lead to the maximum production of ice over the winter. That is, the maximum transfer of heat from ocean to atmosphere. Hence, come springtime, a relatively cooler ocean and warmer atmosphere.
If, instead, the Arctive were completely covered with first year ice at the beginning of winter, this should result in relatively colder atmosphere and warmer ocean. The ice layer is effectively insulating the ocean.
The latent heat of formation of ice must be conducted to the ice/air interface in order to form a thickening ice layer. The rate of heat transfer is inversely proportional to the ice thickness Hence, the rate of heat transfer must vary logartihmically with ice thickness.
So this year, entering winter with relatively low existing ice, we should come to springtime with relatively high Arctic air temperatures and relatively low sea temperatures.
Is that the case? Can we look forward to warmists wailing about the abnormally high Arctic air temperatures in the coming weeks, when it’s a natural consequence of the improved heat transfer from ocean to air?