Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
From the “weather is not climate” department, the sea ice is in early and thick in Alaska. It makes me shiver just to look at the picture. They had to use an icebreaker to get fuel to Nome.
Figure 1. The Bering Sea region in Alaska. Anchorage is at the upper right. The Aleutian peninsula and chain runs down to the lower left. Ice covers all of Bristol Bay, and extends well out from the shore to the west. Photo Source
I fished commercially up there, in the Bering Sea. I’ve lived in a container in the Peter Pan Cannery boatyard in Dillingham, and gill netted for the noble salmon in Bristol Bay, drunk too much and worked it off laughing in a blazing hot steam bath with some Yupik guys trying to roast me out the door by cranking up the heat. I’ve made great money in driving sleet arguing with the herring regarding the eventual fate of their roe in Togiak, and seen the walrus hauled ashore in their thousands on Round Island. Those fisheries kill a man or two a year, plus the usual crushed hands and feet and the like. But I haven’t fished the January Bering Sea crab fishery, the one made famous as “The Deadliest Catch”. Figure 1 shows why I don’t do that.
The Bering Sea ice this year is in early, and it’s thick. Not only that, it’s moving south fast. The crab fleet has some $8 million dollars of gear in the water, and the ice is moving south at twenty miles a day. Usually ice comes in later and thinner, and moves south at three miles a day. Boats are tied up to the Dutch Harbor docks. At St. Paul Island, out of the photo to the left, the crab boats usually sell their loads to the processor boats. It is also totally iced in. Millions of dollars have already been sunk into moving the crab boats and the processor boats and the crab pots to Dutch. If this cold continues, the season will likely be a total bust.
My point in this post? Awe, mostly, at the damaging power of cold. As a seaman, cold holds many more terrors than heat. When enough ice builds up on a boat’s superstructure, it rolls over and men die. The sun can’t do that. The Titanic wasn’t sunk by a heat wave.
The thing about ice? You can’t do a dang thing about it. You can’t blow up a glacier, or an ice sheet like you see in the Bering Sea above. You can’t melt it. The biggest, most powerful icebreaker can’t break through more than a few feet of it. When the ice moves in, the game is over.
Now me, I’m a tropical boy. My feeling is that well-behaved ice sits peacefully in my margarita glass, making those lovely cold drips run down the outside, and giving me a brain freeze when I hold the glass to my forehead.
But when ice jumps out of my glass and starts running all around painting the landscape white and solidifying the ocean and falling on my head and freezing my … begonias, well, at that point the fun’s over. I call that “water behaving badly”.
And if you want to worry about a climate related occurrence, I certainly wouldn’t worry about the dread Thermageddon™, the long-foretold and ever-receding premature heat-death of civilization.
I’d worry about water behaving badly …
Best of the cold to my friends in Alaska, stay safe on the ocean, and my regards to all,
w.
I put a 🙂 on the end of some of my comments to indicate a friendly disagreement, or even a facetious reply.
I leave it up to the reader to recognize the punctuation.
Most do.
That said, I bid adieu.
John Billings- I have 11,000 or so hours in aircraft big and small. did a bit of bluewater sailing in the north Pacific.Plus some riverine and bay sailing. owned two sailboats. I have a Pacific Crabber
as an in-law.he’s been to the Bearing in winter. Willis is correct.100%. I’ve been near a passenger in a Commuter Airliner,a DC-7 Airtianker,and a few other aircraft. Every time I have been truly
afraid it was due to weather caused inicdents. The two worst involved ICE on the wings and the engines. Nothing is any more disconcerning than seeing you are now heading down in a Piper
Chieftain shaped ice sulpture. Or, being vectored into a windshield cracking, riviet popping, hail storm by ATC. Yup,I too fear the cold..
Douglas DC says:
January 28, 2012 at 7:48 pm
===========
Just out of curiosity, what de-icing systems did that Chieftain have ?
Props?, boots on the wings ?, weeping wing?
Does the snow in Alaska add to the Glaciers? If so is the 30 ft of snow interesting.
http://www.nodeju.com/17959/alaska-buried-under-mountains-of-snow.html
Seems like cold temperatures and lots of snow means that it might not all melt by next winter.
Those Bering sea crab fishermen needn’t worry bout being iced in – the Beaufort Gyre will blow it all away in no time.
/sarc off
Louise wrote: “I have yet to see any reliable statistics that enable us to see whether a warmer or colder climate will lead to more deaths (across the globe) in the future. … Does anyone have a link to actual facts rather than political spin on this issue?”
Here’s a WUWT story about temperature-related mortality: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/23/new-peer-reviewed-study-global-warming-lowers-death-rates/#more-28224
From CO2 Science: Lives Saved per Life Lost Due to Global Warming
Reference
Christidis, N., Donaldson, G.C. and Stott, P.A. 2010. Causes for the recent changes in cold- and heat-related mortality in England and Wales. Climatic Change 102: 539-553.
“For more on this important topic, including results from all around the world, see the many items we have archived under the subheadings of Health Effects (Temperature) in our Subject Index at http://www.co2science.org/subject/h/subject_h.php .”
John Billings wrote:
If you’ve never been at sea when your winches look like frozen walnuts and the sheets won’t follow the spool nor bind, cleats are iced over, your snatch cleats won’t, and your cold hands are all that keeps the main hauled close and those hands are tired from doing this for hours, when the tiller has a mind of it’s own and your fatigue has given it its head and you issue a sailor’s prayer the iron helmsman doesn’t fail but if it does the lanyard won’t, your storm tri-sail has sagged under the weight of rime ice, and your compass is a snowball then you have much to enjoy about the sea ahead of you.
One hand for Jack and one for the ship is the rule, and sometimes the odds toss you the need for a third hand you don’t have. That is when Neptune owns you. You have only one job and that is to not let that happen. But now the brightening wind seems bent on boxing the compass and blowing snow is drifting across the waves say it is time to reef the main and take a quartering sea – which hand to use, Jack?
trbixler says:
January 28, 2012 at 9:39 pm
Good insight, you’ve identified the action. A glacier is ruled by what’s called the “mass balance”. Mass balance is the gains (the half you discuss above) minus losses (melting, sublimation, and wind ablation).
More snow means more gains. More cold means less losses. Both act to increase the mass of the glacier.
w.
Louise, here are two links from the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) regarding heat-and-cold-related deaths. The first is “Heat-Related Deaths — United States — 1999-2003”, at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5529a2.htm. The other is “Hypothermia-Related Deaths — United States — 1999-2002 and 2005”, at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5510a5.htm.
The cold-related article focuses on three particular cases, while the heat article does not; but they both give the basic statistics for heat-and-cold-related deaths in the US over those times, which are these:
“During 1999–2002, a total of 4,607 death certificates in the United States had hypothermia-related diagnoses listed as the underlying cause of death or nature of injury leading to the underlying cause of death (annual incidence: four per 1,000,000 population).”
“During 1999–2003, a total of 3,442 deaths resulting from exposure to extreme heat were reported (annual mean: 688).”
The articles present those stats in slightly different ways, but if you calculate the annual mean for both you’ll see that the cold mean 1151 beats the heat mean 688 by 67%. I’d say that’s a statistically significant difference in the two causes of death.
Wonderful writing.
This line, of course : ” Awe, mostly, at the damaging power of cold . . ” is the kernel that poor Louise seems unable to process.
I live in Finland. It is January. If I were to go out tonight and sit still in my front yard wearing my normal summer clothes, I’d be dead in the morning. Our climate is quite literally lethal for an unprotected human. Some days ago on WUWT there was a mention of the famine in the 1790’s over here, when two consecutive crops were ruined by cold weather. A third of our population died. Such was the risk of living on the outer edge of what was considered arable land.
Of course, tonight we are all safe and snug in our winter wear and warm houses, and since extreme is the norm at these latitudes, tomorrow morning kids are off to school and adults are off to work. Not because we are especially hardy, but because humans are adaptable, and the human spirit is indomitable. All over the world, people have adapted beautifully to their surroundings. Still, a warmer climate has generally meant an increase in wealth and happiness, and cold has meant increased risk of poverty and disease.
Snowy owls are making a rare mass migration south from the Arctic and showing up across the USA:
http://news.yahoo.com/snowy-owls-soar-south-arctic-rare-mass-migration-175336821.html
Global warming must be making the heat intolerable up there (NOT)
Ah, yes … Thermageddon™: the threat of doom perpetrated by Thermomongers.
I don’t yet know more about this film (see review link below) than what’s stated in this review, but I’m already seeing talk on social media that National Geographic has bought the rights and that there’s the beginnings of a push to show it in schools. I’ve seen enough of glaciers in the western USA including Alaska to know that they are often reduced over the past two centuries since the LIA, not merely the past decade or two. However, the meme now is “melting glaciers” so people here who have a way to contribute to this public discussion may want to be ready for this:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/chasing-ice-sundance-film-review-284913
On the what do mariners fear question – I’ll side with Richard Patton. Fire ranks as the number one concern for most sailors. However that doesn’t make Willis wrong. If you sail (motor or steam) in cold weather regions, then ice is probably the bigger concern.
I have to admit that my sea experience doesn’t include ice accumulation as a problem, as we cruised under it. If we had a concern it would have been colliding with it. Fire, on the other hand was a big threat. A fire on a sub can quickly incapacitate the entire crew.
There seem to be a number of fair-weather fishermen on this thread.
I’m not here to school anyone on anything.
But the deep sea men of the world know one thing above all else: Only the wind can do the worst of all things, which is to separate a man from his boat. All else is trivia.
And I will extend an open invitation to any fair-weather keyboard warriors to contradict me on that. None of you have experienced the northern North Sea.
John Billings says:
February 4, 2012 at 5:21 pm
John, you are indeed trying to school me, and failing badly. Many things can separate a man from his boat. One false step at almost any time can do it. One moment’s inattention is enough. It doesn’t need wind, it can happen on a flat calm day. I watched my friend’s son almost die that way, simply stepping from one boat to another in windless conditions one Alaska midnight when the gunwales were slippery with frost. Your claim, that only the wind can “separate a man from his boat”, is a landlubbers fantasy, my friend.
Ice is one of the very best things for separating a man from a boat. When you get ice buildup, you can’t trust any handhold or any foothold. Try going out on the bow or up a mast when everything is covered with an inch of clear ice, and come back and give us your estimate of the pucker factor. For me, it’s mega scary, the fear factor is way up there with ice, much higher than going on deck in the fringes of a cyclone … and I’m a man who has done both.
So yes, there do seem to be fair-weather fishermen on this thread, and you are proving yourself to be one of them by your continued denial of the very real dangers caused by ice. I’ll take wind over ice, any day of the week.
w.
John Billings says: February 4, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Why do captains take their vessels out to sea when the cyclone and her [his] path is predicted to pass/collide on their course or mooring?
Speaking from observed experience.
Jessie says: February 5, 2012 at 1:14 am
First of all, the expected center of a cyclone in 48 hours has (usually) a 300-600nm error radius. Second the gale force wind radius of a cyclone, especially an extratropical cyclone, can be over a thousand miles. And while I was a forecaster for the Navy forecasting for ships from the Bering Sea to the equator and the West Coast to the Date Line I saw more than once storm force winds (50kt and above) spread across greater than a 500nm mile reach. There is no ship in the world that can get out of the way of something that large, especially if it is a hurricane or typhoon that has gone extra-tropical. Speeds of those systems have reached 45kts. A nuke ship could reach those speeds in calm seas, but when the waves start coming up the speed of the ship has to go down unless the captain plans to visit Davy Jones Locker.
Thank you for your response Richard Patton. Appreciated.