By Steve Goddard
The Catlin Expedition is Now only 45 miles away from the North Pole. They have traveled 265 miles (as the crow flies) since March 3, for an average of about four miles per day. They only have a few days left on the ice and are caught in The Beaufort Gyre. They write:
Imagine being chilled to the very bone; where every step brings pain and discomfort; where there is no way of getting respite from a permanently aching back; where hauling a sledge twice your body weight is like dragging a car with the handbrake on; and where, despite trekking for over eight hours in the type of biting winds that feel like being relentlessly pecked at by invisible crows, you are getting nowhere. Literally nowhere. Caught on a polar treadmill that will happily drive you backwards if you stop your herculean efforts to…. Just. Keep. Going. Some 50-odd days into the expedition, and Ann, Charlie and Martin find themselves once again suffering from the powerful negative drift that persecuted them at the start of their mission. Aside from pressure ridges, open leads of water and large patches of thin ice, negative drift is one of the biggest factors affecting Arctic crossings. Psychologically, it is the most damaging of all.
Soon they can return home and report on the rapidly melting, highly acidic Arctic.
Temperatures in the Arctic are close to normal, and will be above freezing in about a month.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Arctic ice extent is also close to normal.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
The big story during the last few days is the divergence between the different data sources.
JAXA (green) is nearly half a million km2 lower than NORSEX (red.) DMI (fine dots) and NSIDC (purple) are half way in between. All are within one standard deviation of the mean (i.e. normal.) Unfortunately the NSIDC computer has been naughty and hasn’t updated any of their graphs or maps since Friday.
This time of year shows almost no year over year variation in extent or area. Ice extent has now declined by over one million km2 since the late March peak. The modified NSIDC map below shows in red, the total melt since early April.
The next modified NSIDC map shows where ice has melted during the last week.
The modified NSIDC map below shows where ice is above normal (green) and below normal (red.)
Ice continues to be above normal on the Pacific side where the waters are running very cold, and below normal on the Atlantic side where the waters are running warm.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
The Pacific side of the Arctic is where the anomalies (red) have mainly been the last few summers, so things are shaping up for a nice recovery this summer.
Modified September 3, 2008 map from http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20080904_Figure1.png
Within a few weeks, ice in the central Arctic will quit thickening and start to melt. Stay tuned. The next few weeks will be slow news.
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I hope that they will finally learn a lesson for their next mission:
“Start your new expedition from the opposite side of the Pole from where you started in previous years and let the Beaufort Gyre take you for an easy ride to your destination at 90º.
But warmers are not famous for learning lessons.
Next time they should start their expeditions from the other side of the pole and let the Beaufort Gyre take them on an easy ride to their beloved 90º.
But warmers are not known for learning lessons. Stubborn folks… 😉
Arctic is certainly an important factor from climatic aspect. Geomagnetic changes caused by the rise in the Siberian and fall in the Hudson Bay Z component of the GMF have an interesting trend which appear to match the temperature anomaly.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC21.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC16.htm
If anyone is seriously trying to argue that the earth has not warmed up over the last 30 years they have lost the plot totally. The evidence is overwhelming. So what’s the point of all this nonsense ? I don’t care whether you think the cause is natural or man-made. This site is exactly the sort of rubbish which seems to emanate from America in ever greater quantity. What ever happened to the America that lead the world ?
Tom H 9th of May 7:56:
The Top Gear team went to the Magnetic North Pole in their Toyotas, not the physical one.
Smokey says:
May 9, 2010 at 8:51 pm
wow, what a surprise that you come back to the null hypothesis like you do everytime ANYONE raises an issue with the logic in one of the WUWT posts. Do you really not have any thoughts of your own? Do you really think the linkages/conclusions stated in the post are valid for any reasons? And why do you constantly try to detract from what is being stated with your null hypothesis speeches? Why not bother to discuss the issue at hand?
And Anna v…there are many factors that define the end of summer ice cover, preconditiong by thin ice, summer circulation patterns, air and sea temperatures, cloud cover, melt ponds, etc. To state cold SSTs in the Pacific mean more summer ice makes me think WUWT is grasping at straws . Why not tell it like it really is.
These folks are back AGAIN? Weren’t these the folks who couldn’t run equipment, keep dry, and avoid injury while accomplishing nothing last time?
Someone needs to send an airplane over their heads and drop a radar image of ice thickness to them, along with a thermos of hot cocoa and a GPS programed with the route home…
One of the most sophisticated poltical liars that I know stated that ‘scaring the general public witless’ was a legitimate tactic as in their eyes, ‘nothing else would get people to think about green issues’.
The person is a qualified doctor in a senior position in the UK medical hierarchy who would be struck off if they used anything other than rigorous medical data to make decisions in their place of work. Apparently, in their Royal sanctum, things are different. The masses are idiotic serfs to be controlled and manipulated using emotional torture.
You might ask how successful that person was in exhorting one person, namely either a man or a woman, to share their life with them?
Not too good is the answer to that one.
I truly trust that all those who claim that siphoning billions of dollars worldwide to ‘scare’ the public into doing something might be fruitfully challenged to run their own fiefdoms in the same way, just to see whether disciplinary procedures in those organisations would firstly fire them, secondly refer them to the BMA and thirdly refer them to the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons in London.
You will not be surprised to hear that the person concerned is a feminist, a cryptofascist and possessed of a psychopathic dominance complex that seeks to destroy all who resist at all costs.
Sound like a new ‘disease’ which we can get adopted by the medical profession.
I need a Nobel Prize for firstly defining a new disease, secondly mapping its spread and thirdly coming up with a radical treatment solution (how about rounding them up, putting them in camps in Western Colorado for the winter and getting them to exist like the Sioux?)
Will you put me up for it, folks???!!
Credit where credit is due. These types of expeditions by drama queens do get MSM attention. The words Arctic, Ice melt and global warming are hence firmly entrenched in the general public minds.
On a related note, it is not this negative drift these alarmists have to worry about. The real negative drift has been provided by mother nature for the past 12 years.
As hard as they try to alarm people, mum nature just keeps pushing harder in the opposite direction.
In the end, there can only ever be one result. Mum nature 1, alarmists 0
Is there any reason why JAXA should be used in preference to arctic-roos?
Alarmists are running out of real scare stories so they latch onto Arctic ice thickness, acidity, Antarctic peninsula ‘warming’, C02 causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions etc. As time goes by many of them might rue the day they nailed their flags to the mast of CAGW.
Robert E. Phelan says:
May 9, 2010 at 9:53 am
Icebreakers-
The size of the screw(s) on these beasts is impressive. The pitch is unusual too. Torque is what is needed to break ice. Speed breaks other things.
The problems come when the breaker meets some resistance from the pack. The prop punches holes through the topmost halocline and disturbs a balance that has been in place for a long time prior to its arrival.
A Knickerbocker-glory turns ugly when stirred.
anna v.
“barefootgirl” (yea right!)
“It is not temperatures at this time of the year that define ice extent”
Presumably air temperatures do affect the ice temperature setting a gradient of temperature from the ice/air interface down to the ice/water interface. So colder air should on this basis make the ice more resistant to melting. But physics do also dictate that water temperatures have a larger effect.
Nonetheless sea ice will recover this September, I hope “barefootgirl” (sounds like a pseudonym for online grooming of school teenagers) RGates, Anu etc will stay with us to enjoy the spectacle.
Mike (above) has it right.
The black line in the chart in the post is the mean 1979-2006. However a look at Mike’s chart will show you that the annual ice extent has been in a declining trend.
Hence, the 1979-2006 mean value is not of much use. In technical terms, the mean is non-stationary. What you would normally do is de-trend (by differencing the values) the data before tying to fit a model. But to do that you first have to admit there is a trend.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100504_Figure3.png
Mike says:
May 9, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Caitlin needs your help. They are up there in the balmy Arctic sweating to the thin ice.
The Arctic right now http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/New%20Image.GIF
is so terribly threatened compared to 1979.
I just love the way those Extent Graphs are stretched vertically, and how nothing is happening on the Area Graphs:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/YearlySeaIceAv.GIF
But the one that really blows the candles out on the cake is the global Sea Ice Extent:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Man, that is one screamer of a graph.
Correction:
But the one that really blows the candles out on the cake is the global Sea Ice Area:
Squarebob Spongepants says:
May 9, 2010 at 9:36 am
“Imagine being chilled to the very bone; where every step brings pain and discomfort; where there is no way of getting respite from a permanently aching back”
Sounds like living in the post-Labour UK as you approach retirement.
________________________________________________________________________
Good analogy. However it soon will be “Sounds like living in the post-Carbon Trading world as you approach retirement. but I am sure John Holdren, whom Barack Obama appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, can come up with a “politically correct” method to make sure all the retirees do not suffer for long.
In his own words:
“….Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.
The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits….” from Ecoscience 1977 by John Holdren, Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich
If you think this is not something to be afraid of here is another passage from that book.
“…Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development….
However the USDA has taken care of the problem. Epicyte developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture.
http://www.matchdoctor.com/blog_85536/Covert_Sterilization.html
http://www.alternet.org/story/18154/?page=1
http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/ecocorn011105.cfm
And these are the people who run the world?!?!?!?!?
Meanwhile, that Volcano is still at it:
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/322450,extra-icelandic-volcano-activity-ongoing.html
#
#
R. Gates says:
May 9, 2010 at 9:44 am
Still, your reports are amusing, even if you left out the fact that arctic sea ice is currently below level seen in 2008 and 2009 for the same date.
_______________________________________________________________________
Are you just completely ignorant of statistics or are you pushing this misinformation in hopes that there are gullible fools reading this who will believe you?
Steve clearly states “All are within one standard deviation of the mean (i.e. normal.)” That means the numbers belong to the same population as the statistical mean and the differences between them can be explained by sampling error. Statistics and standard deviation are used to test whether a data point is actually different that the rest of the data points taken from the same “population” in this case the data points are no different that the data points comprising the baseline. Or more bluntly there is no mathematically significant change period.
Mack520:
The reason they aren’t having battery problems might be that they are just using the sea.
Well, they say it has become acidic……… .
“negative drift is one of the biggest factors affecting Arctic crossings. Psychologically, it is the most damaging of all.”
Well, I guess we won’t tell them how completely pointless their even being there is (other than the entertainment value). That would be cruel, and could possibly damage their psyche’s beyond repair.
They must persevere, they are gaining indulgences from his Lord (Al Baby, the magnificent super bedwetter). He is with them, he will cheat them to the end of their journey, so persevere, persevere…
Though they, as the green church holy scriptures say, should be on free waters already, enjoying tropical waters on a banana funny boat instead of a sledge.
toby May 10, 2010 at 3:46 am,
I understand that this is an Arctic ice thread, but if the Antarctic is included, we see that nothing unusual is happening globally.
And barefootgirl May 10, 2010 at 12:34 am,
I feel your frustration. It must be agonizing to be in the position of flogging a dead horse hypothesis like CO2=CAGW.
Your consternation at being unable to falsify the null hypothesis means that the hypothesis stands. And since the CAGW hypothesis has been falsified, not least by the planet itself, then we are left only with the null hypothesis: as Dr Spencer explains it: “No one has falsified the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.” Natural variability within the parameters of past climate extremes = the null hypothesis.
Frantic arm-waving arguments over wiggles in graphs showing only natural variability do not falsify the null hypothesis, even if those wiggles go outside two SD’s [because global is the issue, not one selected hemisphere]. If the average temperature in July is 80°F, summer is not falsified by a year in which the July temperature is 77°F. It is simply natural variability being expressed.
I understand the need to believe in approaching doom. That need often devolves into cognitive dissonance; like solipsism, it is an inability to rationally view the real world. The counter to that fear is the scientific method. Since you also attacked anna v in your post, here is anna’s summary of the scientific method:
So we have rational skeptics vs true believers. The planet is the umpire, and the climate alarmists are striking out.
Unfortunately the NSIDC computer has been naughty and hasn’t updated any of their graphs or maps since Friday.
As clearly stated on their website:
“A power outage is planned from 5:00 p.m. Friday, May 06 until 8:00 a.m. Monday, May 09 (USA Mountain Time). Please be aware that our Web site and FTP servers may be temporarily or completely unavailable during this time.”
R. Gates says:
May 9, 2010 at 9:44 am “Still, your reports are amusing, even if you left out the fact that arctic sea ice is currently below level seen in 2008 and 2009 for the same date.”
Don’t you find it ironic that to find years with larger ice extent, you need to go back to 2008 and 2009? Not to 2005 or 06 or 04 or . . . The three years with the largest ice extents for ASMR-E have been the last three years. (Of course, ASMR-E has been around only since 2002. Nevertheless, to say that the years 1979-2000 were the normal years is not much better.)
The pallid exploits of the Catlin kids sure enlarges the giants of polar exploration of the past couple of centuries. I hope and trust history won’t list them along with Amundsen, Scott, Nansen, Frobisher…