Guest Post by Steven Goddard
According to the Catlin website, the team plans to leave the Arctic later this week. I believe that they have done a fantastic job educating the public about the Arctic. Their mission has been followed breathlessly by BBC and Guardian reporters, who previously believed that the Arctic had melted and become a place for sunbathing.
Following the daily reports of ice, cold, frostbite, hypothermia, pain and general misery being endured by the team – even the most daft newspaper reporter must be aware now that the Arctic is a very cold and icy place.
My hat is off to the Catlin team for providing an invaluable education to those of us enjoying the springtime at lower latitudes. Hopefully they will return home safely to their families, and produce a useful and unbiased report of their findings about the ice.
This education for the public on the enduring cold of the Arctic is not marred by the fact that they failed to deliver on many early promises, including reaching the North Pole. Maybe this is why the press is pretty much ignoring them now, with only 14 hits in a Google News search for “Catlin Arctic Ice Survey”.
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Are they still out there?
That says something. If the latest safe date is April 30th, and they are still out there, that should be a testament to increased cold and ice extent for this season.
If it were catastrophic warming, they would have been pulled over a month ago. They can’t tread Arctic Ice Water, you know.
“rbateman (19:35:08) :
Are they still out there?
That says something. If the latest safe date is April 30th, and they are still out there, that should be a testament to increased cold and ice extent for this season.
If it were catastrophic warming, they would have been pulled over a month ago. They can’t tread Arctic Ice Water, you know.”
Seems that only geologists and those blessed by HRH can walk on water. Geologists working in the tiaga and tundra quickly learn how to walk on water, others need a blessing.
RayB (19:34:21) :
From the other Ray- The nice thing about science is that even failed experiments return useful observations.
I agree. They also brought us the term anecdata, H/T CTM
It is funny when the climate protest in Washington DC was held during blizzard warnings. Ok, I giggled for a week. Hopefully these guys get out without too high of a toll on their bodies. While I want to see their mission fail, no one wants to see them come to harm.
You also might want to play nice.. After drilling all of those holes in the ice, he (Presumably Penn) is going to look like Lou Ferrigno, the original Incredible Hulk. Three holes an hour for five hours would be the ultimate upper body workout. Drilling holes in ice is very hard work.
Here’s a video of the ice drill they use, doesn’t seem too bad.
Gee, Phil., that’s almost a foot of ice drilled. Impressive…
…NOT.
If you want to pretend that the Catlin Three Stooges are conducting science, go right ahead.
The rest of us know better.
Anthony,
I think the comment by VG deserves a new thread.
VG (14:40:36) :
… BTW another silly sun “Model” paper just appeared which shows the sun has no effect on climate LOL. ScienceDaily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090511122425.htm
This news item demonstrates another attempt to use Nintendo Science as a source of data. No mention is made of the $10 million study to be performed at the CERN to take REAL DATA, the scientific way:
Learn the Laws and Theories, make some observation or have an epiphany and come up with a hypothesis, develop an experiment to take data, collect and analyze data and compare results to the hypothesis, accept/modify/or reject the hypothesis.
Imagine living in this kind of “weather” year-round:
“Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley have seen it all, weather wise, on this expedition.
“In February, when we set off, the wind chill factor was fairly permanently, adding considerably to the -40 degrees Celsius ambient temperatures,” Hadow reminds us. “Now conditions have improved somewhat, it feels safer to look at the impact that had on us. We were all battling hypothermia. Our brains definitely slowed down a little. It was very, very tough.”
Now though, with temperatures a comparatively balmy -20 degrees C, the team are occasionally able to use the weather to their advantage.
“If the wind drops, we can get our clothes dry by hanging them on ski poles,” says Martin Hartley, who had a particular problem with a wet, frozen sleeping bag in the first half of the expedition. “We dig the poles deep into the ice and hang our jackets over them. Towards the end of the day, there’s even a slight warmth in the sun that gets them almost dry.”
At the other extreme, however, are the storms that on a couple of occasions have kept the Ice Team tent bound for days at a time.”
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/Weather
WOW 160mm in 20 secs!
Just over 6″ in good conditions on a lake somewhere, NOT the Arctic!
Also, that doesn’t look like the drill that Pen was holding, maybe his is better but I suspect adding extensions may add a little time.
DaveE.
I cannot imagine drilling that many holes (75) on your breaks in 40 below or worse weather.
I cannot imagine drilling that many holes by hand period in a day AND travelling that many kilometers.
I can see the fight erupting. Drill or drag the sled, what’s it going to be?
Nice picture of the pile-up of 2007 that was measured to be up to 15m thick by the Wegener Institute.
I wonder how they drilled that with a 5.2m drill?
>>It will be deemed a great success, the ice is thinning
>>faster than expected, more new ice than expected, warmer
>>than expected,…
We had less hypothermia than expected; lost fewer fingers and toes than expected….
.
They have certainly highlighted the current “back to normal” ice extent, and also brought attention to the recent German fly-over mission that measured the ice thickness to 2x (4m vs 2m) expected values.
A marvelous result, that could help to counter the wide spread belief that the Arctic ice is somehow “In Peril” from “Global Warming”.
The Alfred Wegener Institute clearly demonstrated the folly and ineffectiveness of the Catlin expedition.
In just four weeks the Polar 5 aircraft loaded with instruments accomplished what would otherwise take an army of thousands of Catlins to do on foot, and that with much more precise results.
The AWI survey clearly torpedoed anything Catlin ever might have intended to claim.
There’s no way Catlin will be able to say the ice is thinner now. The AWI clearly has shown with a broad comprehensive swath of measurements that the Arctic is THICKER.
For Catlin, this was all for nothing.
Conviently, if I am remembering accurately.. all the info from the sled was lost. And the sled never worked again once it broke, which was sometime before the first air drop. Since then it has been all hand measurements… What would be cool is to find one of their camps, and do a spot measure:) But then the ice they measured isnt there anymore having moved? Handy:) By the way.. did we ever find out who picks up their trash?
jack mosevich;-)
The correct title for our future King is actually, HRH the Prince of Fools!
Code Tech;-)
Too true, lets not have HRH PoW on the throne or he’ll be talking to every green vegetable there is. Poor chap, he had a tough upbringing you know!
Question to all. The link at the top of this topic is to WWF. It states that there are three “experienced” polar explorers. I’ve heard of one, Hadow, but never of Daniels or Hartley until this expedition. Any one know of them from other famous of not so famous exploratory events? I was under the impression that they were relying on the experience of Mr Hadow.
I don’t know how much hard science they completed but they did take some pretty pictures. That has to count for something!
At least they are coming home before someone got seriously hurt or even died.
That looks a lot like the drill (auger?) that the Finns use for ice fishing. Typically no more than 40-50 cm of ice on the lakes in winter, although our Finnish friends tell us that this year the ice on the lakes was 70cm thick. I don’t think that the young lady would be looking quite so happy after drilling through Arctic ice!
OT, I went to a My son’s 4th grade concert last night and was subjected to propaganda songs about the envronment and endangered speices. After, I asked him what he thought about envionmentalists, hoping to teach him a few things.
He told me they were “people that make things up and try to get other people to do what they want”.
I was so proud.
The business of ice drift was new me. I assume the Catlin team knew about this.
Is the drift direction constant? Did the ocean current change, NAO, I think, going negative, take them by surprise?
With due regard to the amount of drift experienced, it is possible the team
covered more distance over the ice than they get credit for.
I have read about concern for aircraft landing on Arctic ice in late spring.
Is this valid? Did the Catlin team know about these concerns?
Were they expecting an alternate form of recovery at the planned end time
of their expedition when ice should be approaching maximum melt?
bill (14:55:14) : Referring to the Catlin Team’s ice drilling:
“I measure 40m between each drilling, and I will be doing about 10 holes every evening…”
Then, the later comment from Catlin:
“The extremely sharp drill blade section needs to be replaced after around 10 holes.”
Not being familiar with Arctic ice drilling, does this mean that Catlin has to have a replacement ‘drill blade section’ for every single day? Catlin stated they do at least 10 holes a day and the drill blade has to be replaced after 10 holes.
Do they re-sharpen the drill blade every day or have they carried a whole bunch of new blades with them (one a day)? What do they do with the old blades?
Inquiring minds want to know…
Retired Engineer said, (15:38:54) :
“75 measurements in 5 hours? 15 per hour. Obviously not all holes, perhaps “It’s COLD” (would that count as a measurement or an observation?) I rather doubt one could drill through 1-2 meters of ice in 4 minutes, but I really haven’t tried.”
I agree with Retired Engineer. I seriously doubt the 75 measurements number. There were many days when the weather was so bad they did no drilling at all. Is that an averaged number or an optimal number? Also it would take time to re-locate between each measurement, get out the equipment, set it up, then the time to drill the hole, add to that the time to make the measurements and record your findings. All this is done with arctic clothing on which impedes movement and accelerates fatigue. Add to that the fact that it is COLD and they are cold which slows muscle movement and cognitive ability, plus they are fatigued from the trek (all of this adds time).
The video posted by Phil shows a person in light clothing drilling approximately 6” in 27 seconds in what is clearly ideal conditions. If the average hole was 1.5 meters (actually closer to 2) then in ideal conditions it would take around 5 minutes just to drill each hole. These are clearly NOT ideal conditions so it would take longer. Then add in the time to make the measurements and record your findings and you are left with the realization that the 75 measurements a day is bogus just like the fraudulent biometric data they reported until they were called on it. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/14/catlin-artic-ice-survey-bio-telemetry-status-demonstrational/
This reminds me of a research proposal that “passed” through the “you scratch my back I’ll scratch your back” gate. The proposal was clearly written and the research steps “verified” with clinical trials. When I was hired to perform the experiments per the protocol, I was stymied by the amount of time it took to calibrate, hook up, measure, and put away the equipment. The time it took to measure a subject response just to the signals was about 2 hours, and that did not include the pre-calibration, hook up, and put away phases. These were very sick patients with by and large terminal illnesses that were bad enough to bring them to the hospital for treatment. No matter that the proposal stated that clinical trials verified the design, it was impossible time wise to complete the measurements as outlined in the proposal. Someone fudged. The study design should have never been given the green light.
hehe, this is soooo funny 😀
PS, what’s happening at NSIDC? It seems they don’t update the sea ice graphs anymore?
All so critical. Why not read the blogs. The copy I pasted above explains how many holes:
I measure 40m between each drilling, and I will be doing about 10 holes every evening, which takes roughly four hours
The drill is 10 cm across – it is not a “fish” drill. so the effort required to drill will be less.
The depth is measured validly (despite stupid suggestions a few threads back) In one blog the manufacturer of the tape is mentioned but this did not work and has been modified to correct the problem
The amazing plane/radar manages an accuracy from the info sheet of about 1 metre in 3 metres thickness. I’m sure the measurements taken by Catlin are somewhat better than this.
Why do you consider this pedestrian science flawed? 400km of ice has been measured at intervals. Even a measurement down the same hole would tell what the melt rate was.
On a blog some where they say that organic waste is left behind (a couple of years it’s in the sea) and the rest is handed over at re-supply time. I assume the blades are thus returned to base..
Alan the Brit (02:14:04) :
Before criticising why not read. Daniels and Haddow have done it all before. Hartley – not sure and I cannot be bothered looking for you!
bill,
I enjoyed your comment :
During the time they have been on the ice, temperatures have ranged from -50C to -7C. What would you hypothesize the “melt rate” has been at those temperatures?
As far as I remember, the Catlin Team was mentioned only once in the Hungarian press, exactly when their expedition had started. But a few days ago an another article appared with the following statement:
“The expedition team has decided to leave the Arctic a week earlier, not because of the harsh conditions (cold, frostbite, hypothermia, pain, lack of food for days, etc), but the summer melt season is coming earlier than expected and the thinning ice poses great danger to the members of the expedition team.”
To the author of this misleading article: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png The sea ice melt going to begin earlier than expected?? I can’t see it in this chart. It must be my fault… or grants from ‘Big Oil’ 🙂
Can the pro-AGW mainstream media mention the Arctic without mentioning the magic word: ‘melting’?