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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savethesharks (20:47:52) :
Your link to video of Joe Bastardi won’t work. I really would like to see it. Is there another route to it?
Why are they brutalizing that ice cutting all those holes in it! Why isn’t anyone talking about that? That ice is innocent and pure, so fragile. A polar bear could get a leg caught in in those holes. Those poor polar bears. Who will speak for them? And what about the pollutants those Catlin pillagers are leaving behind in the wake of their heartless destruction! Gaia will get revenge for this!
I’ve going to go for as drive in my Smart car!
A. Why use 5 m. of drilling equipment to drill an expected 2 m. of ice?
B. Why is there no definition to the background? It looks like it was shot
in a London studio and “photoshoped”!
C. Shadows? I think you folks are seeing ghosts!
D. I don’t think they drilled any place that wasn’t perfectly flat.
E. The only news here is that the ice was thicker than they expected.
AND
Call the Pentagon if you want a picture of where they are (or not).
I thought about the drill being assembled, but there seems to be only the single imprint (or shadow) so I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Multiple source, 1 a light above (copter, etc.) and another from the Sun.
Got nowhere even with the drill shadow, ending up 15 deg shy of their ‘reported’ position.
Nope, nothing to authenticate.
Move along, nothing to see. (A savethesharks tm!).
“Someone explained earlier that the thin line in the photo was caused by the drill being assembled on the snow. Sounds good to me.”
Since it is a manual drill, the crank cannot be more than a few feet above the ground while you are cranking it. So you put the bit on the crank first and drill, when you have drilled a few feet into the ice, you then install the first 3′ (more or less) extension and begin drilling again. When you have drilled another few feet, you then install the second extension, and so on til the hole is complete. If you look beside Pen, you can see the individual cases for each of the extensions, the crank and the drill bit.
If the drill was completely assembled on the snow, you would not be able to drill a hole, since the crank would be too high to operate.
Of course, the drill may have been completely assembled to demonstrate it’s length.
Perhaps someone here can answer a question for me. When pressure ridges form in the polar ice is there some bridging effect that comes into play that cause the ice to behave differently than normal floating ice and if not and the regular float ratio applies wouldn’t the numerous pictures of them struggling over looming ice ridges indicate they’ve been passing over ice that is 50′- 100’+ thick? I realize that most of the “data” they are collecting is inherently irrelevant and still would be if they were using the finest scientific methodology available, since the survival of polar ice seems to depend much more on the degree and extent to which it is exposed to the destructive forces of winds, currents, and gyres breaking it up and driving it out to warmer waters, than on its’ thickness or the air temperature. Still I am curious whether my thinking on the depth of ice beneath the pressure ridges is correct.
Mike Bryant @21:50:43.
But when your done drilling you pull the drill out and lay it down in the snow while you take a measurement. Then when the helicopter flies by you stand the drill up for a neat picture.
Dave Wendt, your inference about the depth of ice under the ridges is correct, but that is because as sheets of sea ice get pushed up against and onto other sea ice they tilt. The part of the tilted ice that it above the water line (and existing flat ice) forms a ridge. The other end of tilted sheet of ice is well below the water line. Multiple sheets of ice will get pushed up into this tilted orientation forming a thicker area of ice, which may freeze into a solid block.
But the thickness of the ice in this situation tells us nothing about the thickness of the sea ice up until the time it got pushed into this configuration.
One aspect of the issue of ice-thickness and multi-year ice that I have not seen discussed here, particularly as it relates to satellite-based measurements of ice-covered areas of water, is wind-driven over-riding of ice sheets. I spent time in icecamps on the Beaufort and ashore for months at a time in Barrow and other High-Arctic communities. I won’t go into the times when ice thickness in February was grossly and dangerously over-estimated. At least our rigs, theoretically, would float at deck-height; some guys were out there on D7 dozers. Other areas had ice expensively thicker than expected. There was no surface evidence of either condition. Both were due to wind-shifted ice that may have been moved in areas the size of Nebraska. I always suspected, but never had verified, that not all collisions were accommodated with pressure ridges, though they were impressively numerous, though individual section widths may only amount to a few hundred feet at a time. Individual events over a few hours can be impressive. I remember going to bed one “night” (clock-time doesn’t mean much up there) with pack-ice tight against the shore, and getting up about 6 hours later to find no ice of any type within sight. Wind had changed direction, and nothing else. My question is: How much of this over-riding occurs, and thus contributes to longer survival of non-pressure-ridged ice?
@Molon Labe (22:44:34) :
Indeed, there is no way you can tell from that picture if it was taken before or after drilling. As for the lack of shadows, an overcast day can produce such a situation, that combined with a low angle sun will give a rather blue scene.
Still, don’t we look like a bunch of moon-hoaxers when we dissect these pictures?
@Molon Labe (22:44:34) :
Indeed, there is no way you can tell from that picture if it was taken before or after drilling. As for the lack of shadows, an overcast day can produce such a situation, that combined with a low angle sun will give a rather blue scene.
Still, don’t we look like a bunch of moon-hoaxers when we dissect these pictures?
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi
Still, don’t we look like a bunch of moon-hoaxers when we dissect these pictures?
Yes we do. Particularly after Walt’s guest post.
Here is your typical overcast North Pole image on an Exponential Stretch.
You can make out the horizon and footprints.
Top of the page:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/BrightPlage.htm
Steven Goddard:
NSIDC ice map overlaid on the Catlin Route Map
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?
My reading of their aims is to measure a mixture of ice ages.
Looking at your maps (which are not dated or referenced in any way) in the header Can you suggest a better place to start that would enable measurement of different ages?
Further to the east would have placed them predominantly on old ice
Further to the west would have meant tracking over even more 1 year ice.
Everyone seems very keen on using submarines to do this measurement without danger to life* and in half the time with more accuracy. If this were true then why is it not being done (or why are the results not published?). According to the catlin site one of the recipients of the data was to be the US Navy!
* During a triple ship/sub get-together at the pole a while back the UK sub suffered casualties:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7961273.stm
Sub deaths caused by ‘failures’
An explosion which killed two British submariners was caused by “systemic failures”, a coroner has ruled.
Operator mechanic Anthony Huntrod, 20, from Sunderland and leading operator mechanic Paul McCann, 32, from the West Midlands, died on HMS Tireless in 2007.
A self-contained oxygen generator (Scog) blew up while the submarine was under hundreds of feet of Arctic ice.
bill,
Your posts are improving, but the one above leaves out some information that would provide entirely different conclusions.
For one thing, just because the Catlin entertainers say they will provide info to the U.S. Navy means nothing unless the Navy is interested in receiving such information. If you can show that the Navy needs these rigged and arbitrary ice thickness reports, please do so. My own view is that the Navy considers these shenanigans as being contrived for the purpose of publicity that will result in more newspapers being sold, nothing more.
Also, selecting one instance of an unfortunate loss of life leaves out the numerous times that subs have traveled under the Pole. Certainly this has been done hundreds of times at least. There is nothing to indicate that the accident did not happen merely coincidentally with being at the Pole.
Finally, it is pure speculation to assume that the world’s navies are not measuring ice thickness. Just because the results are ‘not published’ means nothing. Do you really think the Navy is in need of these three stooges in order to obtain ice thickness information? By pointing out that the oxygen generator malfunctioned while the sub was ” under hundreds of feet of Arctic ice” indicates that the navy knows the ice thickness.
“Molon Labe (22:44:34) :
Mike Bryant @21:50:43.
But when your done drilling you pull the drill out and lay it down in the snow while you take a measurement. Then when the helicopter flies by you stand the drill up for a neat picture.”
Along with my previous post that is a very likely chain of events… Now, how deep must the ice have been there?
Mike
Bill,
The maps are referenced through a new concept called an html link to the original source. There is probably an input device connected to your computer called a mouse or touchpad. Try clicking on the links.
Tim Channon, SL, Gary Pearse, ;-))
Definitely not a (s)hadow. If you look closely at the main picture at the head of this post, the casings on the ground show a (s)hadow in the opposite direction, small but distinct. I would normally concur with SL about a depression mark from the linked drill bits on the ground, however, in my recollection of drilling piles, & watching borehole drillers on various sites, drill-bit sections are added as drilling progresses, so how does their drill work at the top end 4m high, unless these intrepid explorers have part-time jobs in a circus acrobat act? Having said that, this is certainly a bit of a circus act so perhaps that is how they are doing it!
However, were it to be a (s)hadow, using rough reckoning & scales from the proportions of the man & the drill bit, etc, (always trickey in a photo at some angles), I’d take that as a 3-4-5 triangle, transposing that directly to metres with 3m at the base that would give an angle above the horizontal of about 53°, putting it somewhere south of me!!!! good obs though!
Please gang, this is a picture taken in advance to show the drill. SL is right abut the depression in the snow.
Ok?
Has anyone seen the equipment list for the expedition, and if so remember the make and model of the cordless electric drill and batteries. I just have to have one :). The performance of the unit is quite remarkable under their conditions even assuming fresh batteries from a resupply, and the lack of a mechanism to trickle charge or even recharge.
Also, leaving used batteries scattered over the Arctic ice would be a bio-hazard to the occasional polar bear that might mistake one for a seal nose sticking out of the ice.
This is unacceptable.
Rich D.
Meeechigan, USA
What happened to the hydrocarbon origins post? I just saw it on reader, and wanted to see the comments. If you pull something that already went out on reader, would you consider just replacing it with a short explanation of why it is being deleted?
REPLY: It is shelved for the moment. I am unable to contact the author and without that I can’t let it remain published. – Anthony
Then with all these demo pics (stunts) should it raise the speculation that the Expedition is a prelude to a blockbuster movie? Have a look at the cast and accompanying team. Lotsa great mugs in there. When I consider a movie about science, then what is going on and all the secrecy makes sense.
The Ice thins, the Plot thickens.
“One of the many integrity issues with Catlin is that none of their photos can be dated.”
Is it possible that the photographs were taken with a none digital camera and the developed pictures scanned into their computer? Never done it so wouldn’t know how to identify this. Given their success with batteries and electrical equipment in general they may have taken an old fashioned camera with film in it.
@ur momisugly M White (11:29:03) :
Is it possible that the photographs were taken with a none digital camera and the developed pictures scanned into their computer?
Somehow i think this is way beyond their skills 🙂
Robert Bateman (17:42:03) :
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.
60N even looks somewhat conservative, assuming the drill is close to vertical and the ground is close to horizontal. As the drill is rather tall I guess it must be vertical to not tip over when holding it that way. If the drill extends into the ice it is certainly close to vertical (they don’t drill non-vertical holes, do they?)
According to the Catlin team they are actively seeking out flat ice, so it seems reasonable to assume it is here. The shadow and the drill should then be defining a 90 degree triangle (90 degrees between the drill and its shadow). I measure on my screen 6.3 cm for the drill and 4.3 cm for the shadow. The altitude of the light source (presumably the sun) is then arctan(6.3/4.3) = ~55degrees. You would have to much go further south than 60N to get such a Sun altitude. But if we allow for errors in the assumptions and/or measurements, 60N seems at least reasonable.