The Catlin team has been on the ice for 10 days, and has traveled a total of 17 miles so far as the crow flies. At that rate, they will reach the North Pole in September, except that the ice gets too dangerous by early May and they will have to evacuate. Their current position is 85 47 N 78 22 W, after starting at 85 32 N 77 44 W on March 15. Their web site uses a cool Google earth plugin to map their tortuous route – seen below.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/GoogleEarth.aspx
The Google Earth map below shows how far they have traveled in reference to the North Pole. Note that their starting point and current position are almost right on top of each other at that scale.
The team have been making lots of noise about how unusual the ice conditions are in the Arctic, based on the tiny fraction of the Arctic they have navigated.
“The conditions we’re experiencing are unlike anything I’ve seen in any of the nineteen expeditions I’ve previously been on,” says Martin Hartley. “There are great swathes of only recently refrozen open water peppered with small snow-covered islands of ice in the distance. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come for Arctic travel?”
The map below shows just how insignificant their coverage has been. Their starting and end points appear to be right on top of each other at Arctic scale.
The Arctic Ocean covers 5,427,000 square miles. Catlin 2010 has seen maybe ten square miles of it, meaning they have sampled less than 0.0002% of the ice. They also choose to travel on refrozen leads because they are flatter and smoother, so their sampling is not random. No serious scientist would attempt to draw any conclusions about the quality of the ice based on a cherry picked sample representing less than 0.0002% of the Arctic, but this is no ordinary scientific expedition.
Same story, different year. From 2009 : Can the Catlin Arctic Survey Team Cover 683 km in the Next 21 Days?
Catlin Team Averaging 1.7 Miles Per Day – Only 295 Miles Left to Go!
The Catlin team has been on the ice for 10 days, and has traveled a total of 17 miles so far as the crow flies. At that rate, they will reach the North Pole in September, except that the ice gets too dangerous by early May and they will have to evacuate. Their current position is 85 47 N 78 22 W, after starting at 85 32 N 77 44 W on March 15. Their web site uses a cool Google earth plugin to map their tortuous route – seen below.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/GoogleEarth.aspx
The Google Earth map below shows how far they have traveled in reference to the North Pole. Note that their starting point and current position are almost right on top of each other at that scale.
The team have been making lots of noise about how unusual the ice conditions are in the Arctic, based on the tiny fraction of the Arctic they have navigated.
“The conditions we’re experiencing are unlike anything I’ve seen in any of the nineteen expeditions I’ve previously been on,” says Martin Hartley. “There are great swathes of only recently refrozen open water peppered with small snow-covered islands of ice in the distance. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come for Arctic travel?”
The map below shows just how insignificant their coverage has been. Their starting and end points appear to be right on top of each other at Arctic scale.
The Arctic Ocean covers 5,427,000 square miles. Catlin 2010 has seen maybe ten square miles of it, meaning they have sampled less than 0.00002% of the ice. They also choose to travel on refrozen leads because they are flatter and smoother, so their sampling is not random. No serious scientist would attempt to draw any conclusions about the quality of the ice based on a cherry picked sample representing less than 0.00002% of the Arctic, but this is no ordinary scientific expedition.
Same story, different year. From 2009 : Can the Catlin Arctic Survey Team Cover 683 km in the Next 21 Days?
I hope for their sake that’s faux fur… or maybe they’ll get lucky and not run into any PETA activists with buckets of red paint in their oh-so-slow trek
They are really mis understood. The group is on a little marketting trip. They have to move slow so they can take pictures of the band of trobadors wearing the parkas from their sponsors. This is not about science at all. They could get a machine, ride a few miles, drill a hole with an auger and measure sea ice and move on. But they have to show how they are dragging their “inflatable” over broken ice formations and show how it holds up.
At the Olympics, each skier had to hold the skis so the shot included the name of the providor of freebies.
I watched the Iditarod. It shows what work looks like.
If at first you don’t succeed fail, fail again
Actually they’ve seen rather more of the ice than you suggest since at that location over the last 6 days the ice has drifted in the region of 50km away from the pole! It’s a bit like walking up the down escalator.
I thought all of the ice at the north pole melted a few years ago ??
I ate a snow cone yesterday, I should be able to predict the future of the Arctic Ice from that similar experience.
I hope they’ve stocked up on Pot Noodles.
I spent a long time on the Beaufort Sea in the middle of winter, Ice that was several meters thick would often crack and shift in front of your eyes during 4 week stretches below -40C…. Seeing open water somewhere each day was not really news. How come it is now??
I just took a look at the MODIS image of the region they’re in and it is a mess, the ice is very fragmented, lots of leads perpendicular to their route.
It’s a longish download but worth a look.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010081/crefl1_143.A2010081235000-2010081235500.250m.jpg
Top Gear’s approach:
Sigh, I can only lament with this highly overused yet appropriate cliche:
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Who are they trying to impress, really? And what’s their carbon footprint for that little adventure?
Wow, they are at it again? I wonder if they will leaving rusting fuel drums around this time?
I wonder if this is a sign of things to come for Arctic travel?”
What “Arctic travel?”
Whadda buncha idjits.
Oh look, after posting the Top Gear clip and watching it myself i asked myself “Where’s Bathurst Island?” and found that MiniTruth at the wikipedia made a slip:
“Brooman Point Village[1] on the eastern coast of Bathurst Island was the site of Thule native tribes around A.D. 1000, conceivably during a warmer climate episode.”
Also, in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture
we find
“Since the Dorset were highly adapted to living in a very cold climate, and much of their food came from hunting sea mammals through holes in the ice, the massive decline in sea-ice which the Medieval Warm Period produced would have had a devastating impact upon their way of life, and they seem to have great difficulty adapting to this change.”
It’s funny how you just can’t make the truth go away even after trying so hard, Wikipedia goons, you know the drill, make it disappear…
They want to get to the North Pole before everything goes South. Errrrr,,,,,
Well, so far color me unimpressed with their progress. I mean, a year or so ago the wonderful lunatics from Top Gear in the UK decided to have one of their infamous races with Clarkson and Mays driving up in a specially prepped Toyota Land Cruiser and Hammond going by dog sled with an arctic explorer. The Toyota won handily, though it was obviously not easy for anyone of them, the broken up ice boulders and ridges made passage in a straight line impossible, often they would go a whole day and only advance a few dozen meters. But they made better progress than this, and made it to the pole (as determined by GPS).
Clarkson made the comment that according to Al Gore all of this ice wasn’t supposed to be here!
For real science buy or rent the Top Gear Arctic Special.
Clarkson and Captain Slow in a modified Toyota pickup race the Hamster using a dog sled to the North Pole.
Great shots on the ice field and a lesson on how to make a gin and tonic in a moving vehicle.
http://www.henshaw.co.uk/
This sponsor makes inflatable tubes. Like on my inflatable AVon yacht tender or our inflatable Sea Doos.
It is a lot of work to load your junk on one of these and play sled dog and drag it 1.7 miles a day.
Tiger Woods was sponsored by Nike and recently did some studies in Anthropology that covered a larger area sample field study. The Woods group also dealt with warming issues and fear of extinction of a species. Tiger also studied green grasses, taller native grasses and other golf related fuana. The Woods group study also faced some disprespect from the anti science crowd. Did I mention he also took physical risks?
Who is funding this junket? Big Windpower?
Geoff Alder
I am very happy that this expedition is happening,since it will once again expose how scientifically shallow AGW believers are.
Their entire scope of the trip should they manage to get that far, will be too small to make a credible contribution to science.It has all the flavor of a media show.
I do hope they survive their silly expedition.
Henry chance (07:25:08) :
Plus the chance of months worth of daily press releases where the AGW scriptures can be recited and re-enforced for the “Reality TV” generation. All background by real life drama. They might even tranc a polar bear so they can film it drowning because of rotten ice!
Henry chance nailed it above. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
You’d think they’d have learned from last year that they might have a better shot making it to the pole if they actually looked at a map of ocean currents & dumped themselves onto ice heading toward the pole instead of away from it. This is not exactly rocket science. But at least their adventures provide us with an ongoing source of amusement. 😀
Money better spent
Maybe they will find the Top Gear debris for their drive to the North Pole in a Toyota pickup.