What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like “NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER”? Or maybe “Global warming melts North Pole”? Perhaps we would. sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines.
Some additional captures from the newsreel below show that the ice was pretty thin then, thin enough to assign deckhands to chip it off after surfacing.The newsreel is interesting, here is the transcript.
1958 Newsreel: USS Skate, Nuclear Sub, Is First to Surface at North Pole
ED HERLIHY, reporting:
USS Skate heads north on another epic cruise into the strange underseas realm first opened up by our nuclear submarines. Last year, the Skate and her sister-sub Nautilus both cruised under the Arctic ice to the Pole. Then, conditions were most favorable. The Skate’s job is to see if it can be done when the Arctic winter is at its worst, with high winds pushing the floes into motion and the ice as thick as twenty-five feet.
Ten times she is able to surface. Once, at the North Pole, where crewmen performed a mission of sentiment, scattering the ashes of polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. In 1931, he was the first to attempt a submarine cruise to the Pole. Now, the Skate’s twelve-day three thousand mile voyage under the ice, shown in Defense Department films, demonstrates that missile-carrying nuclear subs could lurk under the Polar Ice Cap, safe from attack, to emerge at will, and fire off H-bomb missiles to any target on Earth.
A powerful, retaliatory weapon for America’s defense.
For example, one crew member aboard the USS Skate which surfaced at the North Pole in 1959 and numerous other locations during Arctic cruises in 1958 and 1959 said:
“the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick. The ice moves from Alaska to Iceland and the wind and tides causes open water as the ice breaks up. The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice. We had sonar equipment that would find these open or thin areas to come up through, thus limiting any damage to the submarine. The ice would also close in and cover these areas crushing together making large ice ridges both above and below the water. We came up through a very large opening in 1958 that was 1/2 mile long and 200 yards wide. The wind came up and closed the opening within 2 hours. On both trips we were able to find open water. We were not able to surface through ice thicker than 3 feet.”
– Hester, James E., Personal email communication, December 2000
Here are some screencaps from the newsreel:
It was that way again in 1962:
And of course then there’s this famous photo:
But contrast that to 1999, just 12 years later, lots of ice:
But in 1993, it’s back to thin ice again:
The point illustrated here: the North Pole is not static, ice varies significantly. The Arctic is not static either. Variance is the norm.
There’s quite an interesting read at John Daly’s website, including a description of “the Gore Box”. Everybody should have one of those.
h/t to WUWT commenters Stephen Skinner, Crosspatch, and Glenn.
See the Skate image archive at NAVSOURCE
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Chris Wright
Thanks for your kind comment on my 04 22 47. You then went on to say;
“According to the ice core, around the 7th century there was a cooling that was actually deeper than the LIA, and the MWP may have occurred as the climate bounced back from this sharp cooling.”
You may be interested in this document that relates closely to your cooling reference and includes the remarkable contemporary observation as follows;
“One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls.”
Anyway, here is a detailed extract with the link given at the end.
“On the Continent eighth-century minor annals record the severe winter in the
area from which they drew their information, Austrasia. This was the power center of the new Carolingian dynasty around the Meuse and Moselle rivers and west of the Rhine. In this region that “worst freeze” began on 14 December 763 and continued until 16 March 764.32 A generation later, the royal court still remembered the winter for its unprecedented bitter cold. About that time someone in the same or a related milieu wrote up the most detailed record, in the Chronicon Moissiacense. It observes under the year 762 that the freeze reached as far as the western provinces of the Byzantine Empire:
“A great freeze oppressed the Gauls, Illyricum and Thrace and, wasted by the freeze, many olive and fig trees withered; the sprouts of the crops withered, and in the following year, hunger oppressed these regions very severely, such that many people died from scarcity of bread.”
In response to the Frankish king’s request for news about the papal and royal
ambassadors whose return from Byzantium he had expected earlier, Pope Paul I protested that “it has assuredly not escaped you that because of the very cruel harshness of this winter season, no one is coming from those parts” with news of the envoys. In fact, the pope’s unusually specific expression of relief that the king himself, the queen, and their three children were “healthy and safe and unharmed” probably reflects the receding terrors of that extreme winter.
The special processions that King Pippin enjoined on the bishop of Mainz for God’s mercy for “the great and marvelous consolation and abundance of the fruit of the earth” after the terrible “tribulation for our sins” surely reflects the return to normalcy in 765. The economic impact on the Carolingian kingdom was serious enough to force Pippin to suspend his long-standing effort to conquer Aquitaine.
Some 2,000 kilometers to the southeast, a well-informed observer at Constantinople recorded that great and extremely bitter cold settled on the Byzantine Empire and the lands to the north, west (confirming the Chronicon Moissiacense’s statement concerning Illyricum and Thrace), and east. The north coast of the Black Sea froze solid 100 Byzantine miles out from shore (157.4 km). The ice was reported to be 30 Byzantine “cubits” deep, and people and animals could walk on it as on dry land.38 Drawing on the same lost written source, another contemporary, the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicephorus I, emphasized that it particularly affected the “hyperborean and northerly regions,” as well as the many great rivers that lay north of the Black Sea.39 Twenty cubits of snow accumulated on top of the ice, making it very difficult to discern where land stopped and sea began, and the Black Sea became unnavigable. In February the ice began to break up and
flow into the Bosporus, entirely blocking it.
Theophanes’ account recalls how, as a child, the author (or his source’s author) went out on the ice with thirty other children and played on it and that some of his pets and other animals died. It was possible to walk all over the Bosporus around Constantinople and even cross to Asia on the ice. One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls. The terrified Constantinopolitans wondered what it could possibly portend.
At 66 ppb, the spike in the GISP2 sulfate deposit on Greenland dated 767 is
the highest recorded for the eighth century (see Fig. 5) and shows that this terrible winter in Europe and western Asia was connected with a volcanic aerosol that left marked traces on Greenland.
http://www.medievalacademy.org/pdf/Volcanoes.pdf
I think modern people in their air conditioned cars or centrally heated homes believe that climate is relatively constant and forget that throughout our history we continually experience extremes of heat and cold caused by entirely natural forces.
This is nowhere better illustrated than in the climate references from the Byzantine Empire 383 to 1453AD which includes considerable detail on the events described above, and provides drawings of the various irrigation systems devised to beat the droughts during warm times, and the famine that ensued during cold times. It is remarkable to think that the Holy Roman Empire can still teach modern man a thing or two-in this case that there is nothing new- climatically-under the sun.
Tonyb
Some interesting links about Hawkbill
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/ice.run/journal.html
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08666b.htm
Hey Jorge, nope, I do not think I see what you are looking at. There are a lot of little details to indicate thick ice, ie the planes down, the periscope and antennas retracted, some pressure ridges on the horizon — but I do not think those are what you are looking at. What do you see?
Richard M (09:01:00) :
Richard M (09:01:00) :
Enduser (07:04:56),
The GISS chart (the fig. 4 you mentioned) shows total solar forcing at .2 w/m2. That is quite a difference from your calculation. Do you know why?
There is something odd about that graph. On the left, if you look between the blue lines, you see a difference of close to 1.5 watts/m^2, yet on the left of the graph, NSIDC added the notation “Solar forcing; .20 W/M^2.”
I do not know how 1.5 W/M^2 of increased irradiance translates into .20 W/M^2 of “solar forcing.” Someone wish to elucidate?
jorgekafkazar says:
Hmmm, is that land in the background off to the left? How far from land is the NP, anyway?
The North pole is located over the Arctic Ocean. The sea ice is free to drift around on the wind and current. Sea ice thickness and distribution must be followed over the course of several decades before an accurate picture of climate can be deduced. Sea ice has been declining in average range and and average thickness since constant satellite monitoring began more than 2 decades ago. Politicians and interest groups can spin this anyway they like, but the facts are the facts.
BTW, the sun in the pictures in the above articles looks to be about 30 degrees above the horizon. The sun a maximum of 23 degrees above the horizon at the geographic pole on or about June 20. Perhaps the pictures were taken at lower latitudes in the Arctic and the authors of the articles just forgot to mention that.
The ignorance and short memories in the media are astounding. As another example of this, my grandfather worked to retrofit an oil tanker into an ice-breaking oil tanker to transport Alaskan oil from the North Slope before the pipeline was built. The name of the original tanker or the rechristened one was the “Manhattan”.
The story I remember him telling was that the tanker had no trouble making the passage, but the damage from the ice made the tanker uncompetitive.
Thanks for reminding me of my grandfather.
In Memoriam for Anthony Gilardi 1907-1997
Aron (11:28:18) : If we ask ourselves what bothers us more of all this global warming or climate change creed, propaganda or whatever it is, is its political agenda which could make our grand children live in a kind of Aldous Huxley´s “Brave new world” where, for example, Al Gore´s descendants would have been chosen as the more “fitted” to rule the world. Can you imagine that?
I think people like the jewish people or like those who were seggregated not so long time ago in the balkans, can help in awakening the world of the danger these ideas entail to humanity. To all those fanatics, our pledge: Live and let the people live!
Thin ice/Thin tent walls . . .
From the Catlin Survey:
“Yesterdays weather window has now firmly closed. The ice team are positioned in the path of a huge storm. Pen reported this morning that winds are picking up, and the Ops team can see that over the next 36 hours the team will experience blizzard conditions with winds of up to 40 knots and a strong possibility of heavy snowfall.
During such extreme conditions, the only course of action is to sit it out and try and get some rest whilst the storm howls outside and batters the thin walls of the tent.”
It’s not just the thin tent that is getting battered by harsh reality. Seems their AGW premise is taking a sound drubbing.
I see Lou Dobs is having some doubters on his show:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2009/20090114065138.aspx
(click the video link)
@Smokey (11:31:45) :
“No one is questioning global warming.”
Huh? This website is almost exclusively devoted to questioning Anthropogenic Global Warming
“And as you can see in this chart, global sea ice extent has broken above its long term average”
Yeah . . . so . . . With so few data points contrary to the long term downward trend, what evidence is there that this blip is indicative of a new trend. Until a new trend is defined by more data, this is nothing more than noise.
And the Old Farmer’s Almanac is in on the act too:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2008-09-09-farmers-almanac_N.htm
The Almanac is reasonably prescient too, as it must have been compiled in the summer of 2008.
I would say lets all purchase those t-shirts and bumper stickers that say
C02 is plant food not pollution. All the warmers get their t-shirt and bumper stickers, well why can’t we.
http://www.zazzle.com/co2_is_plant_food_sweatshirt-235029984449853688
Claims of Arctic Melting = fraud = AGW
Bob (12:14:44) :
“Sea ice has been declining in average range and and average thickness since constant satellite monitoring began more than 2 decades ago. ”
I read a statement that the arctic had lost 1/3 of it’s ice since 1979 (due to changes in thickness – changes in ice extent have been much less, of course). Do you agree with this, Bob?
Thanks,
Frank
Bob says: “BTW, the sun in the pictures in the above articles looks to be about 30 degrees above the horizon. The sun a maximum of 23 degrees above the horizon at the geographic pole on or about June 20. Perhaps the pictures were taken at lower latitudes in the Arctic and the authors of the articles just forgot to mention that.”
Certainly you are correct about the 23 degrees, and it is also possible that the photo is mis-documented. I would, however, respectfully disagree that we are able to make a good estimate of the sun’s elevation in the photo without having more information about the camera and the lens used for the picture.
Ian (00:49:23) :
” When I was allowed to post on RealClimate (sadly I’m now banned for disagreeing)”
Ian,
Forget all about RealClimate.
I was banned just for publishing a WUWT link!
I think there are no WUWT posters left who can post on RealClimate.
storky can not understand the difference between natural climate change and the alarming but unsupported CO2 = AGW hypothesis. Nor can he understand the thirty year trend line [zero line] in global sea ice extent.
Be gentle with him.
ralph ellis (12:35:55) :
“And the Old Farmer’s Almanac is in on the act too:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2008-09-09-farmers-almanac_N.htm
The Almanac is reasonably prescient too, as it must have been compiled in the summer of 2008″.
Ralph,
Last year the Old Farmer’s Almanac published it’s weather forecast for last year’s winter and a great historic view by Joseph D’Aleo (www.icecap.us).
It must have been one of their best predictions ever because every letter printed turned out to be true.
Jason Calley (12:03:43) : “Hey Jorge, nope, I do not think I see what you are looking at. There are a lot of little details to indicate thick ice, ie the planes down, the periscope and antennas retracted, some pressure ridges on the horizon — but I do not think those are what you are looking at. What do you see?”
Richard Sharpe (12:10:23) : ‘Hmmm, is that land in the background off to the left? How far from land is the NP, anyway?”
Okay, this should nail it, guys: From the sun, drop a longish perpendicular through the horizon. Construct a circle with its center on the intersection, and passing through the sun. Now look below the horizon, at the point where the circle intersects the perpendicular again. What do you see?
Ron de Haan (12:45:23) & Ian (00:49:23),
The reason that Gavin Schmidt lost the GW debate is because he’s short: click. He claims it is the reason the alarmists, who went into the debate well ahead, ended up losing the debate [even though the debaters were seated].
So Gavin has a Napoleon complex. Who knew? But that explains his little-man response to posters who disagree with him; he just censors them — because he finally has the power!
Pee Wee Herman would probably understand.
Off topic but how many more hours before the alarmists claim the swine flu outbreak is due to global warming?
I predict a number of made to order studies will be released before Copenhagen linking flu pandemics to global warming. You know the thinking. If emissions aren’t reduced 20% by 2020 then 50% of the population will die by 2050 from flu pandemics.
The alarmists are so predictable. There is no way they won’t try to capitalize on the fear of the year.
For those who have been looking for a source for the photographs. Many submarine/North Pole photographs are in this archive.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/05idx.htm
Look for USS Skate, Sea Dragon, Billfish, Sea Devil, Queenfish.
I am alarmed that WordPress.com seems to be associated with folks who denounce the concept of global warming. I cannot find any way to contact WordPress. I see that two anti-global warming blogs are prominently featured on the WordPress home page. What’s up with this?
@Adolfo Giurfa
If Albert Gore wrote in his book “The Earth in Balance “, almost 20 years ago, that he had been at the North Pole, we should trusr him in this respect, that indeed he had been visiting the North Pole.
Interesting what he wrote in the NYT four months before being honered with the Nobel Prize (at : http://www.1ocean-1climate.com );
Al Gore: “Moving Beyond Kyoto”, The New York Times, July 1, 2007;
“We – the human species – have arrived at a moment of decision.”
“What is at risk of being destroyed is not our planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings”.
“We – all of us – now face a universal threat. Though it is not from outside this world, it is nevertheless cosmic in scale.”
with the conclusion:
“Just in the last few months, new studies have shown that the north pole ice cap – which helps the planet cool itself – is melting nearly three times faster than the most pessimistic computer models predicted”;
Looking at what John Daly presented long ago, was Al Gore better informed then he claims he was??