Santa’s workshop at the North Pole is not under water, despite recent reports. A dramatic image captured by a University of Washington monitoring buoy reportedly shows a lake at the North Pole. But Santa doesn’t yet need to buy a snorkel.
“Every summer when the sun melts the surface the water has to go someplace, so it accumulates in these ponds,” said Jamie Morison, a polar scientist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and principal investigator since 2000 of the North Pole Environmental Observatory. “This doesn’t look particularly extreme.”
After media coverage in CBS News, The Atlantic and the U.K.’s Daily Mail, Morison returned from overseas travel late last week to a pile of media inquiries. Over the weekend the team posted an explanatory page on the project website.
One of the issues in interpreting the image, researchers said, is that the camera uses a fisheye lens.
“The picture is slightly distorted,” said Axel Schweiger, who heads the Applied Physics Laboratory’s Polar Science Center. “In the background you see what looks like mountains, and that’s where the scale problem comes in – those are actually ridges where the ice was pushed together.”
Researchers estimate the melt pond in the picture was just over 2 feet deep and a few hundred feet wide, which is not unusual to find on an Arctic ice floe in late July.
In the midst of all the concern, the pool drained late July 27. This is the normal cycle for a meltwater pond that forms from snow and ice — it eventually drains through cracks or holes in the ice it has pooled on.
The now-infamous buoy was first plunked into floating ice in April, at the beginning of the melt season, about 25 miles from the North Pole. Morison drilled a hole about three football fields away for a second camera, which is pointing in a different direction and shows a more typical scene. Since then the ice floe holding both cameras has drifted about 375 miles south.
- North Pole Environmental Observatory
- Watch an April interview with Jamie Morison when he was deploying the buoy
The U.S. National Science Foundation has funded an observatory since 2000 that makes yearly observations at fixed locations and installs 10 to 15 drifting buoys.
The buoys record weather, ice, and ocean data, and the webcams transmit images via satellite every 6 hours. Images show the ice, buoys and yardsticks placed in the snow to track the surface conditions throughout the summer melt season. Maybe the instruments will survive the summer without getting crushed by shifting ice to record data for another year. Maybe they will fall in the water and eventually wash ashore. Researchers place the buoys to try to maximize their useful lifetime.
While researchers say the so-called lake at the North Pole is not out of the ordinary, there is a lot of meltwater that could affect the sea ice in coming weeks, in the closely watched lead-up to the September ice minimum.
Last summer the sea-ice hit a record low in extent since measurements began in 1979. This year the melting started a bit later than usual, Schweiger said, but picked up in the last couple of weeks. Late summer is usually the strongest period of shrinking because the ice is already thin.
“Whether we’re going to see another record or not is still up in the air,” Schweiger said.
A. Schweiger, UW
An aerial photo taken July 16 shows extensive meltwater pools off the Alaskan coast.
He flew over the ice last month in a joint project with the U.S. Coast Guard to drop instruments that measure oceanic and atmospheric conditions and ice motion.
Morison was last on the ice in April when he deployed the buoys. His forecast for this summer, based on years of experience, is included on a list of expert predictions compiled by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration’s Seattle office.
Morison will not change his June estimate that this summer will come close to, but not pass, the 2012 record, but he is having his doubts. Looking at the photos from the recent flyover shows more melt along the Alaskan coast, and his experience suggests that ice is fragile.
“I think it’s going to be pretty close to last year,” Morison said. “Up in the Canada Basin the ice looks like Swiss cheese, with lots of holes. Even though the ice extent is pretty good, our thinking is that if there’s a big storm event we’re going to see a rapid breakup of that ice and it’s going to disappear pretty quickly.”
The UW team manages another sea-ice tracking tool. The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center publishes daily images and calculations of sea-ice extent and area, while the UW group combines those satellite images and other data to tabulate sea-ice volume. For many people, the UW’s monthly updates are a go-to source for getting the latest numbers on sea ice.
And while the North Pole lake news stories don’t exactly hold water, UW researchers say that it at least shows public interest and concern.
“While the hoopla about Santa’s swimming pool was off the mark,” Morison said, “it is the long-term observational record from these buoys that provides the perspective needed to understand what really is going on.”
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For more information, contact Morison at 206-543-1394 or morison@apl.washington.edu and Schweiger at 206-543-1312 or axel@apl.washington.edu.
“M Courtney says:
August 1, 2013 at 4:27 am
…..These trends up and down at North and South are all a bit meaningless, really.”
I agree……but this is ping-pong not proper science. As discussed in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/07/watching-the-deniers-makes-hilarious-goof-while-accusing-wuwt-of-doctoring-nsidc-images/
At least 60 years is required because of major oscillations to create a statdard deviation.
Oh, wait.
Funny thing is they told us for years about how global warming could melt the ice only.
Again this summer-autumn it will be a competition between colder than usual Arctic air and warmer than usual Arctic subsurface water, which as explained in the recent post by Jim Steele is present as a legacy of recent decades of el Nino dominance.
However now that the period of el Nino dominance has ended, this warm water remnant will diminish year by year.
What a great diversion from the real threat to humanity: politicians, governments and their agencies. The false flag dilemma . The sheeple are easily misdirected and distracted while the wolves move in. As with CAGW, the truth is that there is money to be redistributed on a false premise.
l think the jet stream has given the Arctic a helping hand in been cooler then average this summer. As l have pointed out on other posts, during July the Polar jet has been spliting in two.
With the northern split flowing along the Arctic circle. This has helped to reduce the amount of area over the NH where the cold air can sink south. The main area where the cold air has been able to sink south has been over North America. This has been partly due to the jet splitting over Russia and then only been able to flow to the south as it moves towards North America.
lt looks to me that the NE of North America can expect a other wave of cold weather in about other 2 to 4 days time.
The real fun starts if this sort of jet stream pattern stats turning up in winter.
Anthony
Russian Ice breaker was breaking up the Ice at the north pole yesterday.
What’s the reason for this, Obama has no ice breakers.
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=UGYU
http://www.marynarz.pl/grafika/jednostki_specjalne_foty/1750letpobedy.jpg
The Antarctic excuses do make me laugh. So sea ice is either:
a) accumulating on the periphery of the ice pack, as happens in the winter in the Arctic, or
b) meltwater from Antarctica is running off the continent into the Southern Ocean, where it freezes and forces the entire ice pack further north, even over a thousand miles away. Strangely, this dynamic isn’t seen off Greenland, or we would be seeing higher-than-average ice extent around Greenland too.
b) is patently implausible, so the increased ice extent in the southern hemisphere is either due to wind variations, current variations or colder water. What it ISN’T caused by is warmer water or melting land ice.
http://www.maps.com/map.aspx?cid=1537&pid=15903
“This detailed map of the Arctic Ocean published in October 1971 contains a wealth of historical notes including expedition routes”
It seem many commenters think that playing politics with ice data at the South Pole is acceptable as the other side do it at the North pole.
I regretfully must disagree.
If we politicise the data to match the other side then we get further and further away from doing actual science. Further and further away from seeking the truth.
Even the Champion Pig Wrestler is covered in pig poop.
So I won’t join you in this one, I’m afraid.
But if you truly feel it is right then carry on without me. I’m just an infantryman in the Climate Wars, after all.
Still, if you aren’t sincere then just make sure that choosing insincerity as your weapon is worth it.
tonyb says:
The melt pool is exactly as I described it in my post about the original article. My information came from a 1950 book on the floating ice station. It is completely normal for water to form on top of the ice. This sort of event has been recorded ever since Man first explored the artic. In the 1950′s they dealt with the water on top of the ice by wearing wellington boots higher than the knees.
That also indicates that the ice under the water is still thick enough to walk. No doubt the appropriate clothing 60 years ago was even heavier than that which would be used now too.
To M Courtney:
It’s not playing politics with the ice at the South Pole. The whole GHG
picture says that warming is amplified at BOTH poles. If the North Polar
area has been warming, but the South Polar area has not, then something
else is in play, confounding the results.
RE: NSF North Pole Environmental Observatory The view from webcam 2 on July 26 shows open water on the ice.
That was not open water, it was a pond on top of the ice
MattN says:
August 1, 2013 at 5:50 am
DMI ice extent graph looks very interesting. Unless a big storm pops up in the next month, we could possibly have more ice at minimum than any of the last 10 years.
================================================
Especially when you take into account the August “knee” (e.g. flattening) that seems to occur most years. It seems that when the knee is pronounced there is less loss at the minimum out around the equinox. Also there may be an impact regarding how early the knee hits. An earlier knee may also mean less loss.
So, anyways, wassamattah with open ocean in da Arctic? Better sailing, boost for goods transit, tourists can venture up without risking being crushed or starved by ice lock-up, etc. Bring back the Minoan Warm Period! Things was pretty good then.
>:(
Crashex says:
August 1, 2013 at 6:31 am
A key factor regarding the pond that I haven’t seen mentioned is that it’s not all meltwater. It had rained at that buoy during the prior days; a lot of that “pond-water” was rainwater accumulating in the low spot of that ice floe.
The stake at Webcam #2 shows that 0.5 m of surface melt occurred there in the 10 days from 7/15-7/25.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/WEBCAM2/ARCHIVE/npeo_cam2_20130724072005.jpg
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/WEBCAM2/ARCHIVE/npeo_cam2_20130715073855.jpg
Caleb says:
August 1, 2013 at 2:27 am
Slightly off topic, but I am curious about the positioning of Camera 1 and Camera 2. I had always assumed (wrongly) that they looked in opposite directions, however judging from the position of the sun in the sky, and comparing that to the time noted at the top of the picture, I now conclude the cameras look in roughly the same direction. As one camera showed “Lake North Pole” and one didn’t, and as they show different pressure ridges in the background, they can’t be too close together. How far apart are they?
According to the webcam site:
“Web Camera #2 was built by the Polar Science Center with the support of Jean-Claude Gascard of UPMC. It was installed and its data are recovered by NPEO in a joint effort with UPMC. It was installed in part to monitor the fate of the large Acoustic Ice Tethered Profiler (AITP) ocean buoy its AITPs laser cloud sensor. For this reason it was placed close to (~ 3 meters) the AITP. It is also surrounded with 10-cm wide ablation stakes. The camera stands about 1.8 m above the April level of the ice surface. Owing to the wide-angle lenses used in the cameras, the AITP and the stakes are closer to the camera than they appear. The two web cameras are about 200 to 300-m apart with Web Camera #2 looking to the right side of Web Camera #1 and Web Camera #1 looking away from Web Camera #2.“
Sea ice thickness is, perhaps, the most important climate state variable that is currently poorly observed, poorly documented, and poorly archived. We as a community can do much better and a unified sea ice thickness data set is an important step forward. This new archive will be a valuable baseline and a continuously growing resource for ongoing work by many groups in understanding, predicting, and adapting to changes in the polar regions.