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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Hey Jorge, interesting point about the lack of solar reflection, and yes, we would certainly expect a brighter spot on the ice under normal circumstances. I kept looking at the photo and never noticed that it was lacking until you pointed it out. On the other hand, we really do not have enough information about the photo and how it was made. For instance, the light coming off of the ice will be strongly dominated by the horizontally polarized component of the sunlight. Most good photographers will carry a polarizing filter with their gear so that they can cut out that reflection and glare. You make a good point, but we may just have a photo taken with a polarized filter on the lens!
“ak, you’ve been bamboozled. But don’t feel bad, lots of folks have been tricked by cryosphere’s “adjusted” charts. Compare their before and after ‘adjusted’ chart with yours: click.”
still a downward trend, right? ok. similar to the downward trend in thickness over the same time. you don’t see that with a handful of pics, you see that with data.
and anyway, i only used that source because i followed your link, and then looked around a bit. do you trust the source enough to make a point with it, or not? (or do you get to have it both ways?)
listen, i think it’s great how worked up you (guys in general) get worked up about small blips in this or that record, but blips are blips. remember the cold temps up north this past winter? think that could have something to do with the spike in ice extent (which to re-iterate is still at/below the mean)? heard anything about the sun’s quiescence recently? think that might have anything to do with NOT melting as much ice as it could?
2007 was wholly unremarkable from the rest of the recent record until July. 2008 didn’t deviate much until August. I don’t expect anything different for 2009… we’ll see come summer time.
“[Reply: Always identify who you are responding to.
~ dbstealey, mod.]”
Actually, I was responding to the article.
Let me repost the quote included in the article:
“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.”
Read that again and tell me this article is [snip]
A man on the sub TELLS you that what this article is claiming is FALSE.
“We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick.”
The North Pole was not even REMOTELY Ice free – the sub had to come up through 2 feet of ice, and that was only when they managed to find a thin spot, with most of the area covered with ice 6 to 8 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, ”
Holes in the ice appear naturally and soon refreeze. These subs used those holes to surface. The fact is, the ice today is much thinner all over.
So not only is the premise of this article WRONG it is PROVED wrong by a quote it includes!
Anyone debating this [snip] about trends etc is wasting their time. He is a [snip] and will twist any “factoid” to suit his argument.
Reply: Play nice. Continued use of pejoratives and comments will be deleted in their entirety ~ charles the moderator
ak,
Does it not bother you that the chart you posted looked like it did only because the data was “adjusted” to make it look that way?
And Cryosphere doesn’t only adjust recent data, they adjust all the data. They can make their graphs look like whatever they want. When they adjust older data, they make the more recent chart look even scarier.
I posted a chart showing that global sea ice is now above its thirty year trend line. That is to be expected, given this year’s cold temperatures. Total sea ice oscillates around the trend line.
Literally hundreds of $Billions to $Trillions are proposed to be spent on a non-problem — based on fiddled charts like the one you posted.
Do you not see that as a problem? Is data manipulation to support a repeatedly falsified hypothesis OK with you?
Karmakaze,
The post that is the basis of this thread, as well as the quote, exactly prove the point:
The ice is not fixed, it opens closes independent of temperature, and that thinning ice in the Arctic is not unusual.
Your AGW faith does not permit you to comprehend that this exactly disproves the fear mongering of the AGW promoters. You are a true believer and are being taken on a ride, as long as you willingly participate by fooling yourself.
@smokey “And Cryosphere doesn’t only adjust recent data, they adjust all the data… They can make their graphs look like whatever they want…
I posted a chart showing that global sea ice is now above its thirty year trend line…”
So it is ‘get to have it your way’. Same source of data and graphs, but mine is bad – yours is good. Thanks for the clarification.
Also, why are you posting southern ice extent graphs now? How come it seems nobody wants to talk about Arctic ice extent/thickness in a thread specifically about Arctic ice extent/thickness? (Probably because the data doesn’t support the premise.)
“So not only is the premise of this article WRONG it is PROVED wrong by a quote it includes!”
@Karmakaze – Relax, this sort of thing isn’t so atypical around here… 🙂
AK,
This will give you an idea of some of the shenanigans taking place at CT.
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u43/gplracerx/SummerArcticIceExtent4-2-2009.jpg
This graph was put together by DeWitt Payne. It clearly shows that CT is not to be trusted. By adjusting historical data up and new data down they can fool lots and lots of people… They can even fool you on your IPhone.
Thanks,
Mike
PS I guess they have been taking lessons from GISS.
RE: Karmakaze (17:48:26) :
The claim was not “ice free” the claim was
“We came up through . 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.”
This statement
“We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick.”
Only indicates that in one area near the North Pole they found ice less than two feet thick. The reason for the thin ice (rather than 6 to 8 feet) is explained..
“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.”
Note the relevant facts.
Thin ice near the pole is not “global warming” but rather a refreeze after wind and tides cause a break up.
We know from 2007 that wind and waves can cause a significant ice loss.
We know that if the Catlin team makes it to the pole area finding sections of thin ice would not be abnormal.
Robert Austin (17:05:56)
” ‘The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data.’ That is just a snark, not a rebuttal.”
Actually, it is among the first things you’re taught in Probabilities and Statistics.
“So what is left is anecdotal evidence which is not quantitative or definitive but it may be a hint that you are on the wrong track.”
Nope. It means NOTHING until the next data point arrives.
“So you feel confident in extrapolating the 30 year trend to an ice free Arctic.”
No, not from 30 years of satellite data alone. But when it is reinforced by 11,000 years of core ice sample data from glaciers all over the planet, I have greater confidence.
“The ice is not fixed, it opens closes independent of temperature, and that thinning ice in the Arctic is not unusual.”
@hunter, just to be precise, it should say ‘and that [i]thin[/i] ice in the Arctic is not unusual’. Submarines don’t surface in ice greater than 2-3 feet. That hasn’t changed since the 1950’s.
However the ice [i]around[/i] the polynyas, where the subs surface, [i]has[/i] thickened. Check out this scientific paper I linked to earlier:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/thinning/Rothrock_Thinn.pdf
After reading that, you can come back and use ‘thining ice’ in it’s proper context 😉
No self-respecting polar bear would touch Gore with a 10 foot, north pole.
ak,
Your mind is already made up. But for others following this issue, when ak said: “Same source of data and graphs, but mine is bad – yours is good. Thanks for the clarification”, he was referring to the following two charts. The top chart is the one ak originally posted, and the second one I posted to show the devious data manipulation by Cryosphere Today:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
The final, “adjusted” chart: click.
ak can’t be helped [cognitive dissonance is by definition incurable; when the world doesn’t end as predicted, those afflicted by CD simply re-set the goal posts, and await the next doomsday. They can not admit they’re wrong when CD takes hold; cognitive dissonance is a root worm that blinds the afflicted to any other point of view].
Others, however, can get a very clear snapshot of how we got to this point in the debate, by clicking on this.
And for your reading pleasure, here is another description of recent events: click. If you haven’t read it, you really should. Because $Trillion policy decisions are being decided, right now, based on these outright shenanigans in the corrupt climate peer-review process.
suziam48 (13:11:17) :
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?
Wordpress has a home page?!
(Jaw drops) I thought word press was some sort of extension of this highly trafficked site. Ref: http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Thanks for the info – I feel illuminated, (I see that two anti-global warming blogs are prominently featured on the WordPress home page) I’ll check it out.
suziam48 (13:11:17) :
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?
===================
I’m sorry you feel alarmed suziam. You’re right to be worried I think but, and please don’t walk away just yet, I think you’re worried about the wrong things.
Like you I was, also very worried about the consequences of global warming. Unlike you, however, I got lucky and overcame my fears before they affected my mental well-being!
I feel a bit embarrassed about what I’m about to say – it doesn’t come easy to a crusty old Scotsman like me to be indelicate- but I think you need help. I may be 100% wrong- ach weel it’ll not be the first time – but in for a penny, in for a pound!
You want anti-global warming viewpoints to be put into quarantine, crated up and buried.
Is that really you?
Is dissension and debate about climate science so distasteful as to be ranked alongside holocaust-denial, racial hatred and religious intolerance?
Are all ‘denialists’ so intellectually challenged that they believe the world is flat?
Does the questioning of ‘consensus’ projections about the consequences of AGW make one an ‘Earth-Hater’ or a shill of Big-Oil?
If your answer to any of the above is ‘yes’, then you, truly, are at a critical cross-road in life. The step you next take may well define your future. Choose well!
It should be about the science – the data – the facts- and every argument deserves an airing. Yes, you’ll always get the crazies – there’s no magic bullet for them – never has been, never will be! But, and this is crucial, by exposing the crazies to the oxygen of open and objective debate we can identify and thus exclude their hypotheses. What we should have left over is a payload, untainted by subjective, commercial and political contamination. That is not where we are at!
My road to recovery began for all the wrong reasons. So convinced was I that mankind was headed to ignominious oblivion that I kept looking for examples of catastrophe that supported that view. I found lots and lots of doomsday predictions that reinforced my worldview until the ‘law of unintended consequences’ puckishly intruded and planted a seed of doubt!
I found skeptical sites and found out that the debate was not over as far as some were concerned. Not a problem, I initially thought, that’s the Internet for you and God bless the crazies!
Then I started to notice anomalies that, however hard I resisted, kept on niggling me. Why was I getting the impression that pro-AGW sites, such as those hosted by Gavin and Tamino, were so intolerant of opposing opinions that they came over as rude, ill-tempered bullies unlike WUWT and CA?
The endless repetition by the aforementioned AGW proponents of ‘appeal to authority’ argument, followed by ad-hominem attack and denigration rapidly turned me against those who employed such tactics – It seemed to me that such a public display of bad manners was more a symptom of blustering arrogance than that of reasoned and helpful persuasion!
Suziam48, that’s when the doubts first crept in – maybe for the wrong reasons – in short I started out by disliking the messengers which led to me question their motives; and that made me question the message itself! Agreed that doesn’t make the Science wrong if the message is correct but it should ring a warning bell. Take care when choosing where your next step will take,
PS – I still worry about AGW
I worry that the ‘current consensual perception of certainty’ of the actions needed to combat it, far exceeds the scientific evidence that it is actually a problem.
I worry that the ‘current consensual perception of certainty’ will bring to fruition sets of measures and counter-measures that will achieve precisely the opposite of what they attempt to do.
Mostly, however, I worry about people like you Suziam48. Your passion, intelligence and anger are not in doubt – fantastic attributes – but are you able to re-trace and then re-examine your sources?
What’s up with this?
ralph ellis (12:35:55) :
As both that article and another reader mentioned, the forecast was done with help from Joe D’Aleo (see http://icecap.us/ ). Joe’s article is at http://www.almanac.com/timeline/ . Joe has been one of the most consistent and forceful arguers that warming was not due to CO2. I believe the Almanac brought Joe in after a rather poor winter forecast for 2007/2008 and Joe came up with one based largely on the PDO, AMO, and probably solar data (the Almanac likes sunspots).
[Oops – I submitted this to the wrong post. Sigh.]
arctic-astronomy (08:54:38) :
> There’s an awful lot of light in the “17 March 1959” north pole picture, given that the sun is still about 1.5° below the horizon and hasn’t yet risen at the north pole on March 17.
According to my software, the Sun’s declination was -1.53° on that date. Unfortuately, I’m not quite sure which hour that’s for (hey, I wrote it in 1980 or so!) The declination is changing about 0.40° per day then. American sunrise/sunset is defined as the moment the upper limb of the sub is on the horizon. Given the the size of the Sun and refraction, that moment is close to when the center of the sun is about 0.5° below the horizon.
Civil twilight is defined as the period when the Sun is between -0.5° and -6°, so if the photo was taken right at the North Pole, it would be during bright twilight. At temperate latitudes, civil twilight lasts for about a half an hour, duting this period in the US most states (all?) permit drivers to drive without headlights on.
From the article [the John Daly report by a sailor who was there]:
There’s your thin ice. And ice 6 – 8 feet thick ice is what the Three Stooges/Catlin gang found this year. That deconstructs the most recent moving of the goal posts by the alarmist contingent. Current ice conditions are essentially the same as they were fifty years ago, the desperate arm-waving of the warmers notwithstanding.
We’re skeptics here, and all we’re saying is: prove it. Or if you can’t, at least show some strong, real world evidence [in other words, no GCM “evidence”] that the current climate is outside of its normal and natural historical parameters.
The global warming alarmists are really grasping at straws here, still trying to convince everyone else that a rise in a minor trace gas will eliminate the North Pole ice cap.
They need to get a grip.
Smokey,
well played! misdirection is the first skill learned by any good magician.
here are the timestamps of the images i refered to previously. I’m affixing timestamps so that the readers (and I do apologize for having to post this again) can verify the chronology and sleight of hand: Ak said… “Same source of data and graphs, but mine is bad – yours is good.”
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg Smokey @ur momisugly (11:31:45)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg Ak @ur momisugly (14:57:30)
Same host, same directories, but one graph is good. the other bad. After which I was publicly shamed: ‘lots of folks have been tricked by cryosphere’s “adjusted” charts” ‘ Smokey @ur momisugly (16:19:15)
Listen, let’s drop the image things ( and my response to the cool animated gif stills stands – ak (17:36:05) – consider this my second time stating so).
Ak reiterates… “How come it seems nobody wants to talk about Arctic ice extent/thickness in a thread specifically about Arctic ice extent/thickness? (Probably because the data doesn’t support the premise.)”
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/thinning/Rothrock_Thinn.pdf
(please, i’ll probably lose the debate if you guys challenge me on the data ( the very essence! ) of this post!)
Arctic Sea Ice Thickness: http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/images/icethick.gif
Measured in meters (1 meter = 3.28 feet)
Region ’58–’76 1990s m %
Chukchi Cap (5) 2.1 1.2 −0.9 −43
Beaufort Sea (5) 2.1 1.2 −0.9 −43
Canada Basin (6) 3.5 2.2 −1.3 −37
North Pole (5) 3.8 2.4 −1.4 −37
Nansen Basin (6) 3.9 2.2 −1.7 −43
Eastern Arctic (2) 3.3 1.5 −1.8 −55
All regions (29) 3.1 1.8 −1.3 −42
Source: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/thinning/Rothrock_Thinn.pdf
(apologies – i’m hoping the angle brackets work – the square brackets didn’t earlier. g’night)
Michelle Malkin points out a local weatherman disagrees with MSNBC’s AGW scaremongering, including by pointing out that their AGW claim of the poles being the “climate machine” is obviously wrong, as the machine is obviously the tropics.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/27/msnbc/
arctic-astronomy (08:54:38) : There’s an awful lot of light in the “17 March 1959″ north pole picture, given that the sun is still about 1.5o below the horizon and hasn’t yet risen at the north pole on March 17.
Or fast film and a fast lens. The soft focus foreground and slightly soft at the tail of the boat indicate a very open fast lens. There seems to be a graininess (though hard to tell through the binary translation) that would indicate a fast B&W film. There appears to be slight motion blur to some of the peoples heads that would indicate a shutter speed of about 1/30 to 1/50 second (though again, access to a better image would let me make a more reliable evaluation). The overall flatness of the image implies fast film, pushed processing, or very flat lighting (such as indirect lighting from cloud diffusion / reflection) or all three.
I would speculate that this is a picture taken on about an ASA 400 film, perhaps an ASA 200 pushed to 800 at most, with an f stop of about F2 to F4, and a shutter speed of about 1/30 of a second. I would speculate it was 120 format, since 35mm was still relatively new then, but it could be 35mm as Tri-X was introduced in that format in 1954. If 35mm, the photographer had to have a very steady hand or a stable gunwale to brace against. IIRC, a 2 stop push was well known then and Kodak Tri-X was introduced in the ’40s with an ASA of 200. I don’t remember the 1959 speed, by 1970 it was ASA 400. Given that I’ve taken street pictures at night with such settings, diffuse over the horizon sunlight from cloud bounce ought to provide more than enough light. I see nothing in the picture to indicate it is fraudulent.
The general poor sharpness argues for a not very great lens or a good one so far open on the f stop that it has lost significant sharpness and some more sharpness lost to push processing. There is not enough in the corners to evaluate corner sharpness, though the slight blur to the edge of the bow says edge sharpness is a bit low, though finding an equivalent distance center frame target for relative sharpness is hard. There is either a slight motion blur or the overall sharpness is softer than I’d like, but I think there is a bit more center than edge sharpness. Lens open wide or poor edge of frame sharpness. Hard to tell in this size digital conversion, it could just be an artifact of the copy process.
The very flat washed out overexposed sky says that the light is coming from the clouds and the Skate had far less light on it than the clouds had, so the clouds get washed out in over exposure to get proper light from the Skate / water. Indirect lighting from cloudy overcast sky, not much direct lighting at the water surface.
Compare it with the second picture of the Skate. Much higher contrast with hot spots, sharp edges, greater depth of field, even what looks like a small quantity of cloud detail near the conning tower. Much more light, lens stopped down, shutter faster, less / no push processing, and though the figures are smaller making it harder to determine – they do not seem to show motion blur (even though there is what might be an expectation of motion given the bent posture of the bodies).
Finally, though they are color pictures, the more recent photos such as the Hawkbill show a hard crisp sharpness with great detail and depth of field of a full daylight snow scene consistent with a full sun environment. That is what is missing from the Skate pictures and what you would expect to see if the pictures had been taken in full sun with the sun above the horizon.
Again, access to better copies of the image would allow a more definitive analysis and less rampant speculation, but these pictures are all consistent with their asserted context.
(And yes, working in security and forensics warps how you see pictures for a very long time… though I can still turn it off and just enjoy the art of them.)
Seen JAXA today? 2009 well behind 2008!! Going down slow! Time to sweat alarmists.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Well in 1956 the Arctic ‘calved’ more icebergs than ever today…
One other important thing is that before 1959 no regular data are available for the North Pole’s inner parts in series of reading. Why? Simply because before there was even one scientistic group living over longer periods in the inner parts of the Arctic no such readings could be done….
One other important thing to remember. The ice under a certain spot today aren’t the ice from same longitud/latitude of yesterday. Ice moves.
Looking at the original here:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0857806.jpg
It’s a bit better image, but not by much. Less flat contrast, but not by enough to change my opinion. Sharpness is better, so I’m less critical of the lens quality. If the image format reflects the film format, it’s closest to 122 film size (also called ‘postcard’) though it doesn’t exactly match anything. Aspect ratio of about 1.66 : 1 where 35mm is 1.5 : 1 and 120 format 6×9 is also 1.5:1 and some odd 120 frame sizes are 1.5x : 1 with postcard at 1.69:1 so I’d guess at this point it was a ‘postcard’ camera in 122 film format or 1.5:1 image with the foreground cropped to remove excess water and raft to fit on a postcard. It is possible it’s a 35mm rangefinder camera (they were around then and would fit easier on a small sub) and if this image is as sharp as it gets, well, even old poor 120 film in 6 x 9 had better sharpness than this image. I’d expected the original to be much larger than this and with better resolution. My error of assumption / guessing.
So at this point the only change I’d make is to say I think it’s a 35mm rangefinder with Tri-X in ASA 200, possibly push processed a stop or two, stabilized by resting on the raft gunwale and with the image cropped to remove excess foreground from that ersatz ‘tripod’.
This picture is the most fantastic thing I’ve seen in the whole AGW pantomime. Of course it’s naughty but nothing compared to the polar bears, penguins and melting glaciers. this is the deniers polar bear. Keep up the good work gentlemen