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.)
.
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.
One addition:
Pull quotes are also frequently read, and deserve scrutiny as well.
So the BBC claim the overwhelming consesus is that the ice is thinning.
From what I have seen on this site that may have been the view two years ago but not now.
With the change in the sun sycle well established and less heat around there is only one way the ice is going…thicker.
There’s no need to get bogged down in a semantic argument over grammar or caption vs full article. The substantive argument is that the Guardian lacks the objectivity to point out the Catlin expedition had NO realistic plan to make it to the pole from the start. As Eric Naegle points out, even at the most optimistic rate, the expedition could not have reached the pole in time to be safely extracted. How can one argue that they were battling “toward” the pole, when there was no feasible intention to get there.
Instead, the Guardian is complicit in the Catlin deception (sounds like a Ludlum title?), attempting to give credence to claims of any success, as well as claims of thinner ice or earlier melts.
“will undertake a 120 day, 2000km crossing of the ice cap ”
The Vanco Arctic Survey was planned for a year earlier and is the same survey.
(original URL redirects to guess where)
“History The Vanco Arctic Survey will follow in the footsteps of Sir Wally Herbert, whose team became the first in the world to walk to the North Geographic Pole, and on to cross the entire Arctic Ocean, a feat accomplished after eighteen months on the ice, as recently as 1969.
Sir Wally’s team-mate Fritz Koerniker, made daily ice core readings as they progressed, and Hadow believes these are the only accurate readings currently in existence. He plans to build on Sir Wally’s findings, nearly forty years on.”
http://www.vanco.com/ContentManager/Document.asp?GroupId=2&TypeId=309&Id=3141
I’ll bet the Guardian authors would flunk this fun quiz: click
[I got 2 wrong.]
Good clear picture close to the North Pole, showing some resistance to melting so far:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/noaa1-2009-0517-194522.jpg
six hours earlier:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/noaa1-2009-0517-134844.jpg
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html
another great article that completely disproves global warming, Im sure this one will convert a few alarmists
REPLY: Oh puhleeeze. It’s about shoddy reporting of a shoddy expedition. The snark meter jumped off the scale from your comment.- Anthony
Martin G Atkins:-))
Now that is the real British fighting spirit! I’d forgotting that sketch the tears of laughter a still rolling even after a third view!
AtB
OT: At spaceweather .com there is an acceptance of Sunspot 1017 to be one of the “first” sunspots of SC24. Is this now “settled ” ?
“It’s hard to take a sunspot seriously when it looks like smashed fruit. Sunspot 1017 is, however, important in disproportion to its size or menace. It is one of the first sunspots of long-awaited Solar Cycle 24 expected to peak in May 2013. This makes it a herald of bigger things to come–and we don’t mean bigger pineapple. If forecasters are correct, solar activity should begin to pick up in late 2009 or early 2010, breaking the monotony of deep solar minimum with noticeably larger sunspots and occasional solar flares; a rapid ascent toward stormy solar maximum would follow in 2011 and 2012. Stay tuned…..”.
Mike Lorrey (14:06:42) :
The radar sets allegedly broke, perhaps due to excessive human frustration over the radar providing data that contradicted the expedition members beliefs.
Were any of the radar data transmitted back? It would be interesting to see how they compare with the subsequent ‘manual’ stuff!
Interesting also that even Associated Press gets “recent but undated photo[s] provided by Catlin Arctic Survey”. Either their PR team doesn’t know how to retain EXIF (camera) data, or they do and are intent on removing it. If so, why?
Jim Papsdorf (02:01:31) :
OT: At spaceweather .com there is an acceptance of Sunspot 1017 to be one of the “first” sunspots of SC24. Is this now “settled ” ?
The NEW instrument for seeing ghost spots, for sure, is the OUIJA BOARD 🙂
This may have been canvassed previously, if so, my apologies. But why is there a small bump in the ice record, shown on this site from IARC-JAXA exactly at the start of June every year. Some sort of adjustment ?
Congratulations to Steven. This finding will surely be the final nail in the coffin of the AGW “theory”.
Glug, AGW is a hypothesis not a theory. A hypothesis does not become a theory until it has passed some tests.
remember when WUWT couldn’t locate Tonga properly on a map?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/undersea-volcanic-eruption-in-tonga/
good times. lol
ak (12:27:26) : said
“remember when WUWT couldn’t locate Tonga properly on a map?”
Extract from notreallywikipedia
“It is well known that Tonga is a floating island. At times its speed has been scientifcally measured at over 120 miles in a day. This makes it impossible to locate accurately on a map.”
See, I knew there would be a rational explanation 🙂
TonyB
Here is a really egregious example of MSM disinformation that combines Catlin thin ice claims with the recent MIT “study” that “predicts a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise more than 9 degrees (F) by 2100.”
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2009-05-20-global-warming_N.htm
The MSM has no shame…
ak (12:27:26) :
“remember when WUWT couldn’t locate Tonga properly on a map?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/undersea-volcanic-eruption-in-tonga/
good times. lol”
Yes, in that thread you said:
“lol. the yellow pin of tonga and the pink arrow are not pointing at the same place!”
Apparently you didn’t or couldn’t understand the caption concerning the pink arrow:
“I found it interesting because the SST maps show a warm anomaly in that region, and extending off to the east.”
The pink arrow was not intended to point “at the same place” as Tonga. Tonga *was* properly located.
Are you perhaps related to Monbiot?
Glenn
You have ruined a good story and have demonstrated that ‘notreallywikipedia’ is not as thoroughly reliable as the original 🙂
tonyb
20 minutes later i wrote… (i’ll admit the first comment was posted hastily)
“okay, the distance between even the small yellow area one grid-block west of the arrow (est. 26S, 163W) and not the large anomaly that the arrow points towards, is nearly 900 miles from the island of tonga!”
And the two are related how?
“I found it interesting because the SST maps show a warm anomaly in that region, and extending off to the east.”
that’s a broad definition of region! It’s nice to know that i live in the region of both New York City and Los Angeles, CA!
ak,
The arrow was pointing to the warm region – not to Tonga. The problem is with your reading comprehension and trigger finger.
BTW – How do you feel about Gavin Schmidt’s claim that he can calculate a global temperature from 60 locations?
Steven Goddard (17:09:38) :
“ak,
The arrow was pointing to the warm region – not to Tonga. The problem is with your reading comprehension and trigger finger.”
After seeing his last attempt to save face, I’d say he has more problems than those.
But on the subject, I don’t think the earthquake near Tonga at the same time of the eruption was mentioned in the thread
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009ejbr.php
and that earthquakes are sometimes known to be preceded by increased surface temperatures.
http://www.gisdevelopment.net/application/natural_hazards/earthquakes/mi08_299.htm
“Rise in land surface temperature (LST) before an impending earthquake has been detected for 23 earthquakes”
Just a thought. This may prove to be interesting if you are still interested
http://www.mantleplumes.org/Cook-Austral.html