By Steven Goddard,
A few days ago I did a post Latest Barrow Ice Breakup On Record? Since then, the Barrow webcam has started showing open water, which has confused some of our friends into believing that the ice has broken up at the NARL site – located five miles to the northeast at Point Barrow.
The map below shows the city of Barrow at A, and the NARL site at B.
The satellite image below shows what has happened. A five mile long chunk of ice (red circle) broke away from shore adjacent to the city of Barrow last week. The ice at Point Barrow (green circle) has not changed.
Current estimate from the University of Alaska is breakup on July 7.
Always happy to help out.
Phil,
Also, you forgot to quote the UofA comments discarding your earlier incorrect claims of breakup on June 25
stevengoddard says:
July 6, 2010 at 7:05 am
Phil,
This post was from July 3, and the ice apparently broke up on the 4th. So you can go ahead and admit that the article was correct, rather than continuing to claim otherwise.
The article focussed on the fact that the point where the breakup was being measured was not at Barrow itself (in that regard it was correct but wasn’t the issue anyway).
However the article incorrectly identified the location of the measurement which I clarified, however you continued to argue about it, and still talk about the ice at Pt Barrow (see below).
BTW – The ice is still intact just north of NARL.
We know and we don’t care because the measurement point for which the prediction is made is NARL! You chose to write an article about the late June prediction of a break up at NARL on 11th July and that this would be a record for lateness, in fact it wasn’t, rather it was early. When some of your assertions were contested you denied that you were wrong, well you’ve been shown by events to be wrong on almost everything so perhaps a little humility might be in order instead of continued bluster?
stevengoddard says:
July 6, 2010 at 8:28 am
Phil,
Also, you forgot to quote the UofA comments discarding your earlier incorrect claims of breakup on June 25
25 June, 2010: break-out downtown Barrow, ice present between Point Barrow and Browerville
The coastal RADAR showed a large chunk of landfast ice break out in the early morning hours of 25 June. While this section is in plain view of the webcam, it is South of the region of interest for the forecast.
Steve give up already, you’re just digging your hole deeper! The claims I made about breakup at Barrow on the morning of the 25th are confirmed by the statement from UAF. You were wrong, accept it!
In response to your repeated assertions that there was no visible change in the landfast ice near Barrow, e.g.
“Latest Barrow Ice Breakup On Record?
Posted on June 26, 2010 by charles the moderator
By Steven Goddard,
In my last post, we discussed how there has been no visible change in the landfast ice near Barrow, AK. during the last week.
In response I posted this:
Phil. says:
June 28, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Fortunately for Steve the Barrow site was down over the weekend otherwise his comments would have almost immediately contradicted since the fast ice at Barrow broke up over the weekend. As I mentioned just before the site went down it was showing ice free off the beach (25th at 19:22) with a boat in close to shore, in the fog the only ice visible is to the northeast.
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/ABCam.jpg
Now the fog is gone and a remnant of the fast ice can be seen drifting offshore:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/ABCam-1.jpg
Contrary to Steve’s claim that nothing was happening to the ice if you look at the radar over the last few days you can see small pieces breaking off until about the morning of the 25th when it totally disintegrated and blew offshore. Steve expects the fast ice to the northeast to hang around for another two weeks, doesn’t seem very likely.
http://ak.aoos.org/data/ice/radar/BRWICE/staging/radar/SIRwebanim_more.gif
This is some funny stuff. While the main post is July 3, there are comments by Steve Goddard on both the 4th and the 5th saying “the ice is still there” (where “there” means the NARL reference location). But as Phil, and the Barrow Sea Ice website (U of Alaska) point out, breakout at NARL was in the early hours of the 4th.
I’d like to point out that that website specifically says “This is comparatively early” of the July 4th date, which makes a laughingstock of Steve’s record late breakup post from a couple of weeks back. Oh, and that post referenced the mass balance graph … for which the instruments had been taken down June 14.
Maybe this website has a future as an off-Broadway musical comedy.
From: GFW on July 6, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Said break-out or break-up, the site hasn’t specified which, was reported on July 5 after those comments of Steve’s were made. Thus by the Barrow site he was correct when making those statements.
O RLY? I just checked that post again, no mention of the mass balance stuff in it. Therefore you have written an untruth. Plus when that post was written July 10 was the prediction on the site and July 11 was the latest break-up on record, so that post was sound then.
If you had bothered to study the break-up prediction graph you may have noticed that four of the years from 2000 to 2009 were well before July 5, 2001 was on July 5, and the remaining five are closely clustered from July 6 to July 11. Thus 2010 has already beaten the average date, and if it is confirmed that the break-up has occurred on July 5 per the latest prediction then that will put 2010 very close to the latest dates. Thus “comparatively early” is comparatively inaccurate.
I know of a certain commentator who has a future as a newspaper news writer…
🙂