By Steven Goddard
The Catlin crew was picked up this week, after completing less than 50% of their planned journey to the North Pole and coming up about 500km short. Immediately upon their return, The Guardian reported :
After 73 days, the Catlin Arctic Survey has come to an end. Pen Hadow’s team of British Arctic explorers have battled to the North Pole through freezing conditions collecting data about the ice en route.
This reminds me of the legend of “bringing the mountain to Mohammed.” The crew reported traveling over 400km, a non-trivial percentage of which was due to floating along with the Arctic drift. See this map of Arctic buoys and their drift patterns:
Polar drift map over the last 60 days.
Given the polar drift, one has to wonder how much ice was actually traversed, and how many measurements were taken near the same spot on the first year ice. The Catlin Crew reported in The Telegraph :
Arctic explorer Pen Hadow has warned that the polar ice cap he has been examining to gauge the extent of climate change appears far thinner than expected after trekking more than 250 miles to the North Pole
From the Catlin web site :
Expedition Leader Pen Hadow revealed that initial Survey results show the average ice thickness in the region to be 1.774m.
1.774m is fairly thick for first year ice (and requires a very accurate tape measure.) They started their expedition in March on ice which NSIDC had already identified in February as first year ice – so why were they surprised to find first year ice?
The NSIDC February map showed multi-year ice as shades of red and orange, and their start point (red dot) was more than 100km away from the edge of the multi-year ice. The crew also reported that their data is biased by a pragmatic choice of route across flat (first year) ice.
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.
According to the Catlin web site, there was plenty of second year ice – but apparently the cold weather and lack of progress kept them from reaching it. Note in the map below that second year ice (SY) is not considered multi-year (MY) ice. The AGW world has recently redefined the word “multi-year” as meaning greater than two years. (Next year it may need to be defined as greater than three years.)
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In summary :
- Due to horrifically cold weather, hypothermia and frostbite, they made it less than half way to the pole.
- Some of the distance they did travel was due to polar drift. They reported crossing the 85th parallel “in their sleep.”
- They started on ice which was already known to be first year ice, yet were “surprised” to find that it was first year ice.
- They stayed on first year ice for most of the truncated journey.
- Their ice measurements tell us that the first year ice this year is fairly thick.
- Their ice measurements tell us very little or about the thickness or “health” of multi-year ice.
- They will no doubt get an invite to St. James Palace for tea with Prince Charles
May, 2009 shows the greatest ice extent in the AMSR-E record, which seems to contradict Hadow’s highly publicised remarks about Arctic ice health.
If the Guardian can convince the public every year from now on that the North Pole moved by 500 km south in 5 years it will be in an ice free area of the pacific ocean and Al is proven right after all.
A few years further and the pole will be found close to the Hawaiian islands.
Climate science at its best if the ice wouldn’t melt move the pole instead.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/
Great site that gives you direct data from ice placed buoys.
I see the temps at “Nautilus 90 North” as -10 to -11 C. Also indication of
complete cloud coverage right now.
Must be them there Bermudan sub sea currents making all that ice melt.
Which brings me to, “Don’t worry! Be happy”. Pina Cola’s anyone?
Without a doubt, the Catlin Survey ranks as one of the most environmentally destructive stunts perpetrated in the name of science. How much aviation fuel was burned getting them there, resupplying them, and getting them out? How much refuse did they generate and was it left behind? And all this for what? A few imprecise ice thickness measurements taken with a tape measure!
There was no science here…just one giant publicity stunt for an insurance company…
By the way, did you know that the Catlin Group is headquartered in Bermuda?
http://www.catlin.com/cgl/media/press_releases/pr_2009/2008-05-08c/
Catlin Group Limited, headquartered in Bermuda , is an international specialist property/casualty insurer and reinsurer writing more than 30 classes of business worldwide through four underwriting platforms and an international network of offices. Catlin shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: CGL). Gross premiums written in 2008 exceeded US$3.4 billion. More information can be found at http://www.catlin.com.
I agree that this particular “typo” in the Guardian doesn’t prove anything by itself, but when you’ve seen things like this before in the Guardian, you begin to wonder whether there’s a pattern behind it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/28/climate-change-poles
Under “Summer Sea Ice”, it states that “However, the 2008 winter ice extent was near the year long-term average.”
Is this a typo? Or is it intentionally misleading in order to obscure the fact that Arctic Sea Ice Extent is near the long-term average?: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Perhaps the editors of the Guardian will let us know and issue a correction?
It does seem that some at the Guardian are willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/may/15/climate-change-scepticism-arctic-ice
Also speaking of ice look at this comment by a climatologist
http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2009/05/11/columns/columns06.prt
That’s the Hubbard glacier advancing 7 feet a day and if it closes off the Fjord could have a huge negative economic impact on the various regions, and he blames it on the quiet sun.
He’s predicting the Idaho Summer to be rather short because of the ‘silent sun’, but it’ll be a very hot one as if all the summer heat is trying to squeeze into the shorter season.
As for the big economic threat from the glacier maybe they could blow up the glacier, it’s a newer option now they didn’t really have during the Little Ice Age.
I may have been wrong about John Servais. It seems that some of his readers have taken exception to his published ideas. Unfortunately we will never know what those ideas were since John is a proponent of censorship. very interesting post here:
http://nwcitizen.blogspot.com/
At one point John is called a “sniper” which fits his M. O. here.
I would cut the Grauniad some slack. I expect that the writer was simply unconsciously filling the need to maintain its reputation for speeling mistooks and mispronts.
From:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/may/13/catlin-arctic-survey-ends
What mystery?….. most ‘scientists’ knew that on their selected route they were going to find mostly first year ice. The only ‘interpretation’ that needs to be made is what the reason for their routing was.
More coverage of the “successful” expedition at insurancejournal.com:
“The bulletin noted that the three explorers “were forced to cope with extreme physical conditions during the first weeks of the expedition, even for Arctic standards.”
Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge commented: “The data already sent back show the team have been travelling on first-year ice and provide an insight into its rate of growth this year. The rest of the data the team will provide on their return will help us to process and interpret it further and make a valuable contribution to data available to sea ice scientists.”
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2009/05/15/100541.htm
We should start keeping a tally of how many ways these reports manage to dance around the fact that they had to deal with unexpectedly cold conditions.
It seems to be a trait of those to the left to be unable to admit when they are wr..wr..wro..wron……wrong.
why is it that a person such as the original respondent can come here and make such an erroneous statement but then seemingly be unable to correct it when it is quickly pointed out to him?
[snip ~ Evan]
Everyone makes mistakes but people with integrity admit and fix them.
Regards
Michael
John
try clicking on the link for the Gauardian reported above.. The caption for the picture clearly stated they battled to the North Pole.
It seems all you catastrophists have trouble with the truth.
[Snip – Not too horrible, but I am in a snippy mood. ~ Evan]
The quote used by Steve is the first thing you see when you follow the link. I think in journalism it’s know as the lead.
I’m sure you will try but since alarmists have no credibility outside their own cloistered world your misrepresentation will be seen as a desperate grab at straws.
The AGW crowd has dragged this out rather well.
As the Earth cools and the economy dies the money is going to dry up. Gonna be interesting since even the deniers will be affected.
If you look at the actual history of the Arctic the ’30’s were quite warm and that continued into the ’40’s. There were many boats running all over the NW Passage. Then all of a sudden in the later ’40’s the Arctic froze up. History will repeat, it always does and all the predictions and statistics of the dissapearing Arctic ice will be laid to waste.
So why does the science consider the past history anectodal?
Winston Churchill, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
” John Servais (16:58:28) :
So – I went to the Guardian website and read their article – and they do not say the Catlin team was picked up at the North Pole. Indeed, the article clearly says they are being picked up 490 Km short of the Pole.
So – do you regularly make up quotes on the assumption that your readers will not check? ”
Actually, John, I went directly to the link anthony gave, of the photo of them being picked up, and it states clearly that they were picked up AT THE NORTH POLE.
From this article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/25/melting-arctic-north-pole-explorers
I think Hadow’s been on the ice waaay too long.
Pamela Gray (19:28:07) :
“The early melt part is the fraudulent statement that is the most egregious as far as I am concerned…”
after recent statement, a different picture has to be drawn about hadrow.
he was not only the head of a poorly planned. poorly equipped and poorly executed adventure.
his misleading interpretations of the thin first year ice (that was actually rather thick), his astonishment about the lack of multi-year ice (what was a consequence of the route they decided to choose) and his lie about the early melting season after the 3rd slowest melting in april on record, can no longer be excused by pure lack of knowledge or well meant fanatism.
peter_ga (18:44:31) :
Pen Hadow’s team of British Arctic explorers have battled to the North Pole
There is no ubiquity in the above quote. It’s misleading and sloppy journalism.
Steve Goddard and Anthony:
Thanks for drawing my attention to the Catlin group. I started plotting their movements and examining their website in detail and I wrote the article in American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/the_catlin_ice_follies.htm as a result. I especially appreciate your catching that they were on first year ice most of the way which helps refute their story that “they were surprised” about all the first year ice.
Reply to Joseph
There is a complete Google Earth kml file of their movements probably according to a GPS beacon for the entire trip at http://www.solaradata.com/Solara.kml. There are several times when the team “moved” around but it was solely due to the ice movement, especially at the end.
REPLY: Happy to help. Check out the fake biotelemetry data we reported on, just put “Catlin and biotelemtry” in the search box. – Anthony
The American Thinker article link is missing an l. It should be
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/the_catlin_ice_follies.html
The UK Daily Telegraph has reported that “The average measurement was 1.77m, which is thinner than expected”
Link here; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/5321067/Pen-Hadow-climate-change-trek-finds-thin-ice.html
In the same article, the UK Telegraph further reports “However more than 16,000 observations were taken of the state of the ice, including 1,500 readings of the depth of the ice taken from a manual drill.”
Having followed the Catlin expedition’s misadventures via this blog and others, I’m finding that the elasticity quotient of my credulity with regards to the quoted Telegraph article has just gone into acute catastrophic failure mode.
Breaking news: the Catlin Crew have been ranked amongst the top five British polar explorers of all time: http://margosmaid.blogspot.com/2009/05/catlin-expedition-ranked-second-on-all.html
There’s lies, there’s damned lies and there’ the grauniad (for those readers not familiar with the Guardian, it was notorious for not being able to spell).
Anthony,
Could you please add a commentary reply to the ” John Servais (16:58:28) : ” post (first post)?
I found it disconcerting to the discussion here to have such a blatantly false accusation presented as first comment. It really detracts from the remainder of the thread.
Thank you for your consideration…
Climate Heretic I’m perfectly well aware of the article in the Guardian and agree the quote under the caption is what was written. But whether you like it or whether you don’t in ths same article the point was made that the Catlin team didn’t make it to the North Pole and had to be picked up 490km short. You obviously have no undrestanding of the way the alarmists will seize on this headline and use it to discredit this site, which, if you read what I wrote is a site I strongly support. Providing ammunition to the AGW crowd is not a really good idea
As a Brit I just know that the yearly HM Queen’s Birthday Honours list will contain awards for the 3 Stooges. For what?
About as valid as Al Gore’s Nobel prize or the Oscar for the Convenient Untruth.
If the GPS data is evident for the entire trip how come Anne Daniels ‘navigated’ the team in fog by ignoring the [apparently faulty] GPS and using the wind that ‘She knew was coming from the West.’
And the band played “Believe it if you must!” tra la…….