This is a news story from Germany outlining another Arctic ice measurement expedition. This one was conducted by flying the scientists across the north polar ice cap using the WWII era workhorse Douglas DC-3 airplane equipped with skis, and towing an airborne sounder twenty meters above the ice surface. It makes the Catlin Arctic Ice Survey look rather pointless, but then we knew that. BTW “Eisdicken” translates to “ice thickness”. – Anthony
From Radio Bremen. Translated from German by Google web page translator: Original | Translated
Surprising Results
At the North Pole ice sheet is thicker than expected
![Das Forschungsflugzeug "Polar 5" in Bremerhaven [Quelle: AWI]](https://i0.wp.com/www.radiobremen.de/wissen/nachrichten/polarfuenf100_v-slideshow.jpg?quality=83 "The research aircraft Polar 5 \"in Bremerhaven [Source: AWI]")
The “Polar 5” in Bremerhaven
The research aircraft Polar 5 “ended today in Canada’s recent Arctic expedition. During the flight, researchers have measured the current Eisstärke measured at the North Pole, and in areas that have never before been overflown. Result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than the researchers had suspected.
Normally, ice is newly formed after two years, over two meters thick. “Here were Eisdicken up to four meters,” said a spokesman of Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. For scientists, this result is still in contradiction to the warming of the seawater.
Besides the Eisdicken was also the composition of the air are investigated. With the help of a laser, the researchers reviewed how polluted the atmosphere by emissions from industrialized countries. On the expedition, some 20 scientists from the U.S., Canada, Italy and Germany.
Here is the route map:
See the press release announcing the expedition from Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research here. Note the lack of “live” biometrics.
But they do have a nifty aerial ice thickness probe, shown above.
An ice thickness probe, the so-called EM-Bird, which is usually dragged below a helicopter, is now operated for the first time by a fixed-wing aircraft. The EM-Bird is towed under the hull of the aircraft by means of a winch for take-off and landing. For the surveys, the probe is towed on an 80 m long rope twenty metres above the ice surface. More extensive areas can now be investigated due to the longer range of the aircraft in comparison to a helicopter.
UPDATE: more on the EM-Bird probe (h/t to Ron de Haan)
EM-Bird
Electromagnetic (EM) induction sounding for ice thickness measurements is a technique that can achieve long profiles of some kilometer length. The accuracy and robustness of the EM method has been evaluated by comparing coincident drill-hole and EM measurements. Read more (Poster, pdf, size: 156 kB)
Sure beats hauling a sledge and a broken home-built ice radar around doesn’t it?
h/t to “yddar” and Lubos Motl
New interview with the Alfred-Wegner-Institut.
http://www.uni-protokolle.de/nachrichten/id/176043/
I try to translate the most important part:
Serveral flights from different stations to the north shows an ice thickness from 2.5m (two year old ice near the north pole) to 4m (perennial ice near the coast of Canada) . All in all the ice was a little thicker than in the last years in the same region. Therefore we can assume that the arctic ice recover at the moment. At the north coast of Ellesmere Island the reseacher found the thickest ice, it was more than 15m thick.
Mehrere Flüge von verschiedenen Stationen nach Norden ergaben Eisdicken zwischen 2,5 Meter (zweijähriges Eis in der Nähe des Nordpols) und vier Metern (mehrjähriges Eis in küstenahen Gebieten vor Kanada). Insgesamt war das Eis etwas dicker als in den vergangenen Jahren in den gleichen Regionen, was eine temporäre Erholung der arktischen Eisdecke vermuten lässt. Entlang der nördlichen Küste von Ellesmere Island fanden die Forscher das dickste Eis, mit Dicken oft größer als 15 Meter.
German video about the Polor 5 plane:
It’s going to get thicker thanks to Mt. Redoubt.
yddar (08:29:12) :
“New interview with the Alfred-Wegner-Institut.
…………
At the north coast of Ellesmere Island the researchers found the thickest ice, it was more than 15m thick. ”
This is the ice that was pushed west in 2007 because of the combined wind and currents. All of it wasn’t pushed through the gap between Greenland and Svalbard and melted in the northern Atlantic.
A lot was piled up behind Ellesmere Island, Greenland and Svalbard.
Ice extent became a lot smaller but ice volume was not so much smaller.
Just a theory.
For inquiring minds, the aircraft shown is a Basler BT-67. Basler Turbo Conversions starts with a C-47 airframe, completely rebuilds it including a number of modifications (most notably, a 40 inch fuselage stretch to compensate for the lighter turbine engines) and installs the PW PT6-67 turboprop engines. I have visited their facility researching a scale model that I built.
Website: http://www.baslerturbo.com
yddar (08:29:12) :
New interview with the Alfred-Wegner-Institut.
http://www.uni-protokolle.de/nachrichten/id/176043/
I try to translate the most important part:
Serveral flights from different stations to the north shows an ice thickness from 2.5m (two year old ice near the north pole) to 4m (perennial ice near the coast of Canada) . All in all the ice was a little thicker than in the last years in the same region. Therefore we can assume that the arctic ice recover at the moment. At the north coast of Ellesmere Island the reseacher found the thickest ice, it was more than 15m thick.
Thanks that makes more sense than the first press release.
However, since they were making the first flight of this nature what data are they comparing with from last year?
“The operation of the research aircraft Polar 5 will allow for the first time to carry out large scale ice thickness measurements in Arctic key areas which could hitherto not be reached by the German research vessel Polarstern.”
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/pam_arcmip/?cHash=17cb2bdafa
John Silver (09:47:07) :
yddar (08:29:12) :
“New interview with the Alfred-Wegner-Institut.
…………
At the north coast of Ellesmere Island the researchers found the thickest ice, it was more than 15m thick. ”
This is the ice that was pushed west in 2007 because of the combined wind and currents. All of it wasn’t pushed through the gap between Greenland and Svalbard and melted in the northern Atlantic.
A lot was piled up behind Ellesmere Island, Greenland and Svalbard.
Ice extent became a lot smaller but ice volume was not so much smaller.
Just a theory.
But not one which is consistent with the data.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080717_Figure5.png
Gina Becker (17:19:02) :
As I’ve been saying for a couple of decades now, it’s soot! The albedo effect, along with solar cycle influences. The heavy pollution detected on this mission supports the hypothesis. The arctic (along with the northern most countries) is the only place where the warming trend is significant and possibly due to human influnec. But GHG has nothing to do with it. In the rest of the world, most of the “warming” is obviously due to poor sensor placement, urban heat island effects, and mostly, religiously biased temperature “correction.” The data set is junk.
Some studies have been done on albedo effect difference due to soot in limited regions of the arctic (see Hansen’s paper), but why aren’t some of the trillions being spent to extend the research and correct this problem?? It’s an easy correction, based on known technology.
This year, China’s efforts to close factories for the Olympics, plus the recession’s effect on factory production, plus the extended solar minimum, add up to a good hypothesis on why the positive-feedback, runaway ice melt, which the IPCC and gang eagerly awaits, is not happening!
Gina Becker,
I think your conclusions are far fetched.
I also have read several reports about soot (black carbon) from industrial emissions,
aircraft emissions, but also natural effects like forest fires, underground burning coal fields (see Wikipedia) volcanic emission (like Redoubt, but also much bigger events like the 1912 VEI7 Novarupta eruption and dust clouds
Gobi Desert (China) and the Sahara for example.
The sum of these effects have been with us all the time and they have ample effects.
I don’t say that a dense amount of soot on snow or ice does not have any effect but the temperature band where ice or snow melt is accelerated is rather small.
Dark soot accelerates ice and snow melt at temperatures up to minus 2.5 degree.
And this happens only at moderate to low wind speeds.
Some of the reports I have read stated that soot would be responsible for 25% of the ice melt but I think they are a canard.
The Arctic Sea Ice fluctuates due to natural cycles, wind and ocean currents.
The real melting is caused when the ice is transported from the Arctic into warmer waters, observe this process here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/13/
This was the only situation where the ice levels showed a historic low since ice extend is measured since 1979. And you refer to it as “run away ice melt”.
I call it BS (Bad Science).
To refer to ANY Hanson paper on this Blog is a kind of sin, since all his reports are debunked.
If you look at the seasonal graph of Arctic Polar Ice extend from 1979 until today I can only say that it looks very healthy and that we have absolutely nothing to worry about.
As a last remark about soot.
During the last winter I have used the content of my fire place (I burned briquettes)
on the snowy pavement to prevent my visitors to slip and fall in front of my house.
It had no effect. The underground did not thaw up, it only looked very dirty.
Untill the next snow fell and it was covered.
The BT-67 is a great modification of the immortal DC-3-I have a fondness for
Douglas products anyway.I just hope and pray that the Catlin expediton does not turn out something akin to Earnest K. Gann’s “Island in the Sky”..
Good movie with John wayne too…
Joe Papp (18:41:53)
Joe
If you want to check out the coldest of cold in Antarctica, then watch the Dome Argus AWS. (note the 1m air sensor value on the 25th April).
After all this discussion about thinning ice it might be interesting to see how thick the ”pristine pre-industrial” ice in the Arctic really was.
Here are som figures from Nansen’s “Fram öfver Polarhavet”, Vol 2, , Chapter “Origin, growth and compression of the Ice” pp. 547-550. (1897).
Remember that this was the tail-end of the Little Ice Age.
The expedition let itself get frozen into the ice off Eastern Siberia in October 1893. The ice that started forming on the leads at this time grew like this
April 1894 2,31 meter
June 9 1894 2,58 meter
July 10 1894 2,76 meter (=first-year maximum)
September 1894 2,00 meter (=first-year minimum)
November 10 1894 2,08 meter
December 11 1894 2,11 meter
February 6 1895 2,59 meter
May 11 1895 3,00 meter
May 30 1895 3,03 meter
Measurements at this spot ended at this time, probably because the ice got scrunched up in a pressure ridge, but continued at a nearby site. There the thickness was
November 4 1895 3,36 meter
May 4 1896 3,97 meter
By this time the ice (and Fram) had drifted all the way across the Arctic Ocean into Fram Strait (guess what it is named for), whereupon Fram got loose from the ice and the latter presumably melted, as all sea-ice in the Arctic does after a few years.
So 2,5 meter for second-year ice in April and 4 meters for “perennial ice” (which really does not exist in the Arctic) may be a little less than that old-time ice, but not much.
Mike Bryant wrote:
“When the buoy data showed that the oceans were warming, it wasn’t too long before that was spun.”
I think you meant to say “cooling,’ or “weren’t warming,” no?
@Silver
You are right, the Alfred-Wegner-Institut says about the 2008 ice:
“It cannot be excluded that sea ice is simply mechanically reallocated,” reports Gerdes. “Our model computations show that ice transport from eastern to western Arctic waters caused by wind was an important factor in the great ice-free areas of the Siberian Shelf in the year 2007.”
http://www.awi.de/eng/aktuelles_und_presse/pressemitteilungen/detail/item/minimum_arctic_sea_ice_2008/?cHash=7768f9b4cd
Artic sea looks to be back at 79-00 average by next week:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Or as we say in New York, ‘Arctic’.
“Roger Knights (12:05:23) :
Mike Bryant wrote:
“When the buoy data showed that the oceans were warming, it wasn’t too long before that was spun.”
I think you meant to say “cooling,’ or “weren’t warming,” no?”
You are correct sir, too bad I can’t adjust and homogenize that comment! 🙂
Mike
“”” Capt. L. Oates (15:18:12) :
Dear Pen
Shame about the dastardly Jerries and their rotten old plane, what ?
Just where the deuce was Biggles when you needed him most ?
Reminds one of that pesky Norwegian chappie, Amundsister or something or other, and his dogs, eh ?
Can’t dawdle, I am just going outside and I may be quite some time.
Cheerio and good luck !
Laurence “””
What say old chap; buggered up the foot a bit there I see ! Well get some sleep out there Larry; you’ve earned it.
“To strive; to seek; to find; and not to yield !”
RFS 1912
“”” Gina Becker (17:19:02) :
As I’ve been saying for a couple of decades now, it’s soot! The albedo effect, along with solar cycle influences. The heavy pollution detected on this mission supports the hypothesis. The arctic (along with the northern most countries) is the only place where the warming trend is significant and possibly due to human influnec. But GHG has nothing to do with it. In the rest of the world, most of the “warming” is obviously due to poor sensor placement, urban heat island effects, and mostly, religiously biased temperature “correction.” The data set is junk.
Some studies have been done on albedo effect difference due to soot in limited regions of the arctic (see Hansen’s paper), but why aren’t some of the trillions being spent to extend the research and correct this problem?? It’s an easy correction, based on known technology.
This year, China’s efforts to close factories for the Olympics, plus the recession’s effect on factory production, plus the extended solar minimum, add up to a good hypothesis on why the positive-feedback, runaway ice melt, which the IPCC and gang eagerly awaits, is not happening! “””
Well the mechanism does not impress me Gina.
True; soot on the snow would absorb some of the very limited amount of solar radiation and thereby heat the soot particle. The heated particle would then melt the surrounding ice, and drop down under the surface, till it disappeared from sight, and the melted ice would refreeze.
Have you ever seen soot on a snow or ice field. I’ve seen black dust particles on the end face of the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers in New Zealand; that are about as removed from man made carbonaceous polition as you can imagine. Yes you can see photos of glaciers with black lines on them; but mostly what you are seeing is rocks that have fallen on to the ice from the canyons the glaciers travel down, which gradually work their way to the central regions of the glacier to for those trails.
Yes you are correct soot on snow will encourage local melting; but the process is self limiting.
And what the dickens is all this ice thickness business about. If the chap said it was 4 metres; then it was 4 metres; he was expecting 2 but found 4.
Yes I’m sure what he found was the only ice block in the Arctic.
If they count it as full coverage when it is 15% ice and 85% open water; we should consider some 4 metre ice as a good trend iven if only 155 of it is that thick.
George, Ron,
A study out in the last year or so in _Science_ showed that during the Industrial Revolution, the soot in the arctic due to industry was seven to eight times that from forest fires. It was very significant. The U.S. cleaned up, then Europe, but industrializing nations like China are creating soot like mad. I don’t know what the ratio of manmade to natural is now in the Arctic, but I’ve read that 25% of the pollution in Los Angelos is from Asia. Analyses also show Asian soot in the Colorado Rockies, etc. You look at satellite photos, and there’s a dark cloud coming from Asia, drifting heavily across the arctic. The soot is layered throughout the ice, and it accelerates melting in the melting season. It’s impossible, without a lot more analysis, to predict the effects of this on Arctic melt, but I’ve seen estimates of up to 85%.
Of course, as you say, sun, ocean cycles and wind patterns could swamp any manmade effect. But if we’re looking for ways we might control the climate, this mechanism of soot-driven Arctic ice melt fits the “global temperature” data set much better (under Ockham’s razor) than the GHG mechanism, which relies on poorly understood proxy data and highly conflicting hypotheses to amplify the insignificant GHG effect of 100 ppm CO2 by maximizing/minimizing the forcings and feedbacks of volcanoes, solar irradiance, convective heat transfer, etc, to match the latest data. The surface temperature and proxy data are complete junk, and it takes wildly imaginitive “science” to use the GHG hypothesis to explain any regional variability, such as antarctica ice growth, the antithetical cooling stratosphere, and the troposphere data, which also showed cooling until it was “corrected.” Basically, whatever is observed is what the models are quickly found to “predict.”
The satellite photos of Arctic melting are more convincing, though, even though they only show a thirty year snapshot. And the temperature stations in the Arctic, which show significant increases in some areas, are less affected by urban heat island effects. Again, it could be all natural, yes. But an arctic-based “change” stands up much better to Ockham’s razor than the GHG convolutions.
They did it right. They used the right plane and the right method. A competent team.
In the last week or so Barrow looks like it got dumped on pretty heavily by soot. I’ve tuned in to this webcam every day, and the ice and snow has been pearly white until recently. First I thought it was the changing shadows brought by the Sun, but it’s pretty obvious now it is soot:
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/barrow_webcam.html
Mr Lynn (18:52:26) :
My axe is an antique, but I use all the time. I’ve had to replace the handle three times and the head twice, but it’s as good as new!
Phil. (10:26:02) :
…………..
“But not one which is consistent with the data.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080717_Figure5.png”
Thanks for the pic, Phil. It clearly says “estimates” which in the real world is not synonymous with “data”, only in the Hansen-Mann-Gore world.
yddar (12:32:41) :
@Silver
You are right, the Alfred-Wegner-Institut says about the 2008 ice:
“It cannot be excluded that sea ice is simply mechanically reallocated,” reports Gerdes. “Our model computations show that ice transport from eastern to western Arctic waters caused by wind was an important factor in the great ice-free areas of the Siberian Shelf in the year 2007.”
Did they really need computer modelling for that?
Hey, this science stuff is easy, I can do from my comfy chair!
Unlike some of the wailing weenies who have expressed their prejudices about the Polar 5 Basler BT-67, I would buy one as personal transport rather than a Learjet or similar, if I had the money. At $4.5 million plus extras for a completely rebuilt iconic aircraft, it’s a steal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basler_BT-67
“Chocks away chaps!”. quoth Captain Flasheart. ” I treat my plane like I treat my women. I climb up into the cockpit and take them to heaven five times a day!”. http://www.baslerturbo.com/
New interview with Steinhage from Alfred-Wegner-Institut:
The ice is thicker than expected, but they don’t understand why.
They have not enough data.
The interview ist in german.
http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/forschak/958476/