UPDATE: Breakup has occurred! See below, for my timelapse video
Here is the webcam closeup – when it was still standing as of 14:18 AKDT:
Alaska Dispatch confirms what we already knew in this thread on WUWT:
Like a striped testament to one of the coldest winters to hit Alaska in 100 years, a black-and-white tripod remains upright, atop stubborn Tanana River ice in Nenana. At 12:42 (ADT) Monday afternoon, the still-frozen waters allowed Nenana Ice Classic set a new record for the latest the ice has gone out in the 97 years since railroad workers started keeping track.
If you look on the Nenana Ice Classic website, you might think the record was broken an hour earlier, but the ice-out times listed there are in Alaska Standard Time. So the old record, listed as 11:41 a.m. (AST) is actually 12:41 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time (ADT).
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130520/97-year-old-nenana-ice-classic-sets-record-latest-breakup-river-1
Geophysicist Martin Jeffries at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks said in 2008,
Wall Street Journal – March 7, 2008
Climate Watchers Place Own Big Bet On Alaska’s Thaw
The Ice Classic has given them a rare, reliable climate history that has documented to the minute the onset of the annual thaw as it shifted across 91 years. By this measure, spring comes to central Alaska 10 days earlier than in 1960, said geophysicist Martin Jeffries at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks — and that trend is accelerating. “The Nenana Ice Classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century,” Dr. Jeffries said.
The local ice lottery is further evidence of a long warming trend affecting lakes and rivers throughout the Northern Hemisphere, reported by University of Wisconsin researchers who analyzed newspaper archives, transport ledgers and religious records dating back to the 16th century……….
I wonder what he says now?
UPDATE: 4:43 PM Pacific time (15:43 AKDT), the tripod apepars to have flipped over and sunk as the breakup is now underway. I won’t be able to show this until a couple hours from now when I get home and pull up the series of time lapse captures from my PC running there. Look for a Movie to be uploaded tonight or tomorrow – Anthony
UPDATE2: Timelapse video is now uploaded, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/20/timelapse-video-of-nenana-ice-classic-breakup-2013/
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Janice Moore says:
…. (Wizard of Oz ? [:)])
************************************
I like it! In fact “woz” is my lazy internet handle – just a nickname from school more years ago than I can count! But I live in Oz (Australia) and my surname starts with “W” – so why not? 🙂
Who has the latest photo of it still up?
I have a screen cap at AKDT 15:37:45.
http://i43.tinypic.com/a5b6ee.jpg
I had no inkling it had less than 4 minutes to live.
— Well, other than the number of cars parked to watch the finale.
I also have 15:33:45 and 14:05:44. There is a small leftward shift between 14:05 and 15:33.
But other than ice drifting down the center lead, no discernable changes between 15:33 and 15:37.
007 says:
May 20, 2013 at 5:23 pm
I”m sure he’s sincere but that makes it no less disgusting.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/20/democratic-senator-goes-on-anti-gop-rant-over-climate-change-as-tornadoes-hit-oklahoma/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
========================
Most probably a liar and an idiot, but least probably “sincere”.
@ur momisugly woz (a.k.a. Wizard of Oz),
“… I live in Oz (Australia) and my surname starts with “W” [AND you are (from you writing style) obviously bright — but NOT a humbug, I am sure, (as the WofOz was — he was bright and kindhearted, though)] – so why not?” #[:)]
Hm. As I think about it… too many people might emphasize the humbug part of that title (which I’d forgotten till I wrote this post). LOL, there’s a guy who posts on WUWT called “Richard M” — I’m sure he is a fine fellow (his comments indicate that), but EVERY time I see his name, I think of ol’ Richard M. [Nixon]. Good ol’ Richard Milhouse. And especially, I think of him these days as Barack Hussein D’oh!bama is being compared to R.M.N. more frequently (Mark Levin was making that comparison starting in 2008).
Mr and Mrs Snow also won this thing back in 2005! They’ve won over 1/2 million dollars on this!
http://www.newsminer.com/news/local_news/it-s-over-nenana-ice-classic-tripod-stops-the-clock/article_68cd64e0-c1a7-11e2-b411-001a4bcf6878.html?mode=jqm
John Mason says:
May 20, 2013 at 8:20 pm
Mr and Mrs Snow also won this thing back in 2005! They’ve won over 1/2 million dollars on this!
No, John. The article says they split the 2005 jackpot with 46 other winners for a $6k+ share. 28th of April only came up 3 times in the history but the 29th and the 30th nine times each so I guess the end of April must be a very popular range for people to bet.
John Daly, Jerry Brennan and I discussion the best way to plot the ice breakup data when John first reported on the Nenana Ice Classic and its usefulness or lack thereof as a Global Warming proxy. I have plotted the ice breakup dates using the following metrics.
1. Days (Julian Days) from the start of the New Year at midnight.
2. Days from the Vernal Equinox which occurs at various times on the day of the event.
I could easily generate a graphic of the ice breakup using the calendar date, which is [how] the data is stored, but that graphic is useless, so there are really only two contenders in my view
At first I was very enthusiastic about using the Vernal Equinox until I realized that I have overlooked one very serious problem. There is a very strong time-of-day signature in the ice breakup events because of that big hot shiny yellow thing up in the sky. That signature is very clear when plotting days from the start of the New Year at midnight. When you plot using the Vernal Equinox displacement days, that time-of-day signature is lost or to be more precise, totally obligated. When placing a bet on the outcome of the ice breakup, time-of-day and days from New Years are your two critical inputs. If you bet using the Vernal Equinox displacement, you are going to lose big-time.
For the sportsmen amongst John’s readers, I tried to predict the ice breakup using ice thickness but those results were very unreliable, which is why they call is gambling. After John’s death, I continued to update the Excel tables with decreasing frequency. With today’s events, I updated the tables and started to produce some graphics again.
For the record, this is not the latest ice breakup, 1964 is. But that is not the real news, sine 1990 the ice breakup dates have been flat-lined, just like global warming and they may even be lengthening, particularly with today’s results, which may imply that it is getting colder in Alaska.
Let me review the data and if it appears to be reasonable, I will send the Excel file to Anthony with a public domain declaration. If someone uses the data and gets lucky, just remember that Anthony has a tip jar.
Michael Ronayne
Nutley, NJ
[“Obliterated” vs “obligated”? Mod]
Meanwhile in Europe: England had an extraordinary cold spring, but in Spain it is even more incredible: it snowed in Madrid 2 weeks ago, but the cold continues. The last days it snowed again in the mountains around Madrid and leaving snow throughout the country. Normally Spain is waiting for the first sun tourists in May to go to the beach:
http://www.abc.es/local-madrid/20130518/abci-nieve-sierra-madrid-201305171935.html
http://www.abc.es/local-galicia/20130518/abci-nieve-galicia-mayo-201305181709.html
The Nenana Ice Classic is just “weather”, unlike the tragic F5 Tornado in Moore Oklahoma which was “climate change”
I hate to spoil a good party, but I don’t believe the Nenana Ice Classic record was broken this year.
The Equinox this year was on 20 March at 11:01:36 GMT. In 1964 it was at 14:10:01 GMT. The difference of 3hrs 8mins 25 secs needs to be considered since the appropriate reference frame for the event is the tropical solar calendar not the civil calendar.
The record may have been broken by 3 hours according to civil time, but was missed by 8 minutes and 25 seconds with reference to the solar calendar.
@ur momisugly Leo G says: May 21, 2013 at 2:22 am
leo, I think you got your plus and minus sign wrong. Since the equinox occurred later in 1964 than in 2013, and the breakup occurred later in 2013, than in 1964, the difference is a full 6 hours+ (in relation to the equinox).
There may well have been a trend for 300 years toward later ice outs in the NH, but perhaps the Wisconsin researchers should go back even further to find out if there were a trend prior to that for earlier ice outs.
Bonus round … what is the possible relationship between causal factors of this record ice out and causal factors of recent severe weather in the South Plains (not to mention, the current freeze warning in a portion of Nor Cal)?
“leo, I think you got your plus and minus sign wrong.”
Yes, if the equinox was earlier this year it had longer to melt,
Since I said I’d repost the data once it went here it is.
The full series of dates as year plus decimal number of days. (Sorry no equinox corrections. It would be better but it’s pretty small, so I have higher priorities) .
1917 120.479
1918 131.398
1919 123.606
1920 132.449
1921 131.279
1922 132.556
1923 129.083
1924 132.632
1925 127.772
1926 116.669
1927 133.238
1928 127.684
1929 125.653
1930 128.794
1931 130.391
1932 122.427
1933 128.812
1934 120.588
1935 135.564
1936 121.54
1937 132.836
1938 126.843
1939 119.56
1940 111.644
1941 123.076
1942 120.561
1943 118.807
1944 125.589
1945 136.403
1946 125.694
1947 123.744
1948 134.467
1949 134.527
1950 126.676
1951 120.746
1952 133.711
1953 119.662
1954 126.751
1955 129.592
1956 122.975
1957 125.396
1958 119.622
1959 128.476
1960 123.8
1961 125.48
1962 132.974
1963 125.767
1964 141.487
1965 127.792
1966 128.508
1967 124.497
1968 129.393
1969 118.519
1970 124.442
1971 128.897
1972 131.497
1973 124.499
1974 126.656
1975 130.576
1976 123.452
1977 126.532
1978 120.638
1979 120.638
1980 120.553
1981 120.781
1982 130.733
1983 119.776
1984 130.648
1985 131.608
1986 128.951
1987 125.633
1988 118.385
1989 121.843
1990 114.219
1991 121.503
1992 135.268
1993 113.542
1994 119.959
1995 116.557
1996 126.522
1997 120.436
1998 110.704
1999 119.908
2000 122.449
2001 128.542
2002 127.894
2003 119.765
2004 115.594
2005 118.501
2006 122.728
2007 117.658
2008 126.953
2009 121.862
2010 119.379
2011 124.177
2012 114.819
2013 140.612
” Normally Spain is waiting for the first sun tourists in May to go to the beach:”
Same in south of France. Wettest spring for at least 20 years and summer is struggling to come through. Global warming, “mon cul”.
From Greg Goodman on May 21, 2013 at 1:42 pm:
Ah, I see what you did, added number of days in months plus day of the month. So 4/30/1917 yielded 120 days.
Same mistake I did, you’re counting a non-existent day. As you’re counting, 6AM on January 1 would be 1.25 as a decimal day, except no full days have occurred yet, so the real number would be 0.25 days.
Thus the first date is really 119.479 decimal days.
That is correct but since first of Jan =0 is not more valid than first of Jan =1 it is irrelevant.
In fact to get something that relates to temperature you to take the complement , something like 180 – melting period. I did that and plotted it against a couple physical parameters like d/dt(CO2) and SST using 180 days. The data need a shift of about 40 days to align them.
So for short term variability to match other climate variableness it would be 140 -melting (or 141 depending upon how you count.
To get as accurate as possible I would agree with an equinox based calculation since that is a 0.25 error each year repeating every 4 and included almost a full day drift over the 100 years.
First of January =1 is irrelevant.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=258
What I see as being one of the most important features of the Ice Classic as a proxy is the WWII period. What it clearly shows is that there was not a massive post war drop such as the once introduced by Met Office Hadley about 30 years ago , was adopted by most other SST datasets, and that persists to this day.
There really was a wartime bump in the data , it was NOT an artefact.
From Greg Goodman on May 21, 2013 at 11:49 pm:
Following a numerical methodology that results in summing a non-leap year as having 366 days instead of 365, is to be declared irrelevant, thus allowing the incorrect numbers you supplied to stand as they are “correct enough for this purpose”, thus you don’t have to issue a correction.
Got it. This is Climate Science™, something being completely false yet true enough to make conclusions, is expected.
Colorado Wellington says:
May 20, 2013 at 6:01 pm
Believe it or not, but the discipline of climatology is not the Olympiad for bean counters.
regards
starzmom at 4;43 pm, May 20 has it right. Carried downstream, didn’t fall. Here’s the screen cap from 0:16 of the timelapse above:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63014025@N05/8837703940/ ” title=”Nenana tripod by BrianFH, on Flickr”