Tough Times For Sea Ice Melt Enthusiasts…

Eve says: September 7, 2013 at 4:27 pm
I wonder how much ice breakers have contributed to the “soon to be ice free Arctic”?
I have not seen any substantive research on the subject, thus cannot answer with any confidence. However, if I had to guess, I’d say measurable, but not major. For example, take one ice breaker per this Coast Guard Compass article;
http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/index.php/2009/06/coast-guard-and-the-arctic-part-2/

“Coast Guard Cutter Healy is the largest of the heavy ice breakers in the Coast Guard. Her ice breaking capabilities are 4.5 ft @ur momisugly 3 knots continuous and 8 ft of ice when backing and ramming. Backing and ramming is pretty much what it sounds like and I don’t mean how you parallel parked a car when you were a teenager.”
“Key sea and air lanes need to remain open as a matter of international legal right and not depend on the approval from nations along the routes, so that vessels like Healy can get where they need to go and get there quickly.”

If you look at the icebreaker Healy’s Cruise Track for 2006;
http://www.icefloe.net/images/HLY-06annot.pdf
2007;
http://www.icefloe.net/docs/HLY-07track.pdf
and 2008;
http://www.icefloe.net/docs/healy2008.pdf
it is easy to see how effective a single Icebreaker can be at breaking up the ice in a particular area.
Per this report from Baltic Ice Management (BIM) on their 2008 – 2009 season;
http://portal.fma.fi/sivu/www/baltice/BIM_Joint_Annual_2008_2009.pdf
the chart on page 10 indicates that there were 23 icebreakers in use in just the Baltic Sea at the peak of their icebreaking season. Much of it is about opening and maintaining shipping lanes, cruise ship routes and fishing grounds.
However, as Philip Bradley notes, Black Carbon is likely a factor in Sea Ice melt, as are Atmospheric Oscillations, Polar Vorticity, Wind, Currents, Sea Surface Temperature, Atmospheric Temperature, Clouds, Anthropogenic Effluent, Shipping, Tourism, Fishing, Drilling, and several other variables,
There are Russian and Canadian icebreakers out there now breaking up the ice.
Yep;

“Only one Russian seaport along the officially defined Northern Sea Route is ice-free all year round, Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula. Other Arctic ports are generally usable from July to October, or, such as Dudinka, are served by nuclear-powered icebreakers.”
The largest port and city on the East Siberian Sea is Pevek, “is the most important northern port in Chukotka, although shipping levels have dropped significantly in recent years. The port is the eastern base of the northern sea route’s Marine Operations Headquarters, run by the Far-East Shipping Company from an icebreaker in the harbour, though the port is still owned by the Russian Ministry of Transport.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pevek

And growing:

Atomflot, the Murmansk based home to Russia’s nuclear icebreaker fleet and a division of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom has announced the construction of a new mega-ton generation of atomic icebreaker – the project 22220 – said to be the largest ever to put to sea. Anna Kireeva, Charles Digges, 24/08-2012
The new ship seems to be another expensive assertion of Russia’s self-proclaimed primacy over the Arctic Sea basin and its efforts to control not only oil and gas reserved there – by military force if need be – but even transport through the region, which, if it increases could cause an intolerable burden on the fragile Arctic ecosystem.
The vessel – which has yet to be named – will be built by St. Petersburg Baltisky Zavod shipyard beginning in 2013, and will, according to Russian news reports, have the capability of breaking through ice more than 4 meters thick through out the year, as well as quickly navigating ice fields of more than 2.5 meters thick at a speed of 1.5 to 2 knots. http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2012/biggest_icebreaker

And:

Russia will float out a new-generation nuclear ice-breaker by 2017 with two more to follow in 2020 under a government program to ensure commercial shipping along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) – a 6,000-km Arctic waterway stretching from the Barents Sea in the west to the Bering Strait in the east. Russia is the only country with a nuclear-powered ice-breaking fleet. By the early 2020s, the NSR is expected to start recouping its cost.
The NSR is currently operational all year round. As cargo traffic increases, Russia will need more ice-breakers to cut the way for commercial ships. At present, Russia has five ice-breakers in its Arctic waters. http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_08_25/Russia-to-build-three-new-generation-ice-breakers-for-Northern-Sea-Route-9892/

And;

Canada operates 21 of the world’s estimated 110 icebreakers: 19 owned by the CANADIAN COAST GUARD (CCG) as part of Transport Canada and 2 by private firms. An icebreaker’s chief function is to break, separate or divert ice in ice-covered waters, and the CCG icebreaker fleet has been designed and built for specified Canadian needs: to assist shipping in lakes, oceans and river mouths; to keep channels open through the ST LAWRENCE SEAWAY system; and to support government supply and economic development operations in the Arctic. The CCG icebreakers are classified as heavy (2 vessels), medium (6 vessels), and light (11 vessels). Canada’s most powerful icebreaker, the Louis S. St. Laurent of 13 500 tons displacement (dwt), is smaller than Russia’s four 13 300 dwt nuclear-powered icebreakers of the Rossiya class in service. The Canmar Kigoriak (7200 dwt) owned by Canadian Marine Drilling Ltd, though now mainly inactive, was used to convoy other kinds of marine units working in Arctic ice, such as drilling rigs; it was basically experimental, the prototype for the gigantic 200 000 dwt icebreaker-tanker of the future.
Canada, like all nations with icebreakers (Argentina, Finland, Sweden, Japan, W Germany, the US and Russia), operates many other kinds of ships built to function in ice conditions. These ice-strengthened marine units range from experimental cargo ships, such as the M.V. Arctic, to the mobile arctic caissons owned by large private companies involved in offshore oil drilling in the Beaufort Sea.
Heavy icebreakers in the CCG fleet generally operate in southern waters in the winter months and the Arctic during the summer. Though the Louis S. St. Laurent has worked in Hudson Bay in Dec, no serving Canadian icebreaker is able to penetrate Canadian Arctic water during the severe winter season from November to May.
The present Arctic numbers classification is part of the Canadian Arctic Shipping Pollution Prevention Regulations instituted in 1970. For example, an Arctic 4 icebreaker, which is the category assigned the Canmar Kigoriak, can maintain in general terms a speed of 3 knots through ice 0.91 metres (3 feet) thick in what is called “the continuous mode.” This expression refers to the steady movement forward of the icebreaker through the water. An Arctic 7 icebreaker can maintain a speed of 3 knots through ice 7 feet thick. There are 4 Canadian Arctic Classifications (CAC) for icebreakers and all other ships strengthened for ice. A CAC 1 ship is designed for continuous operation in multi-year ice, while a CAC 4 vessel operates mostly in first-year ice. The knowledge of the icebreaker’s crew is a key component of operating in ice.
In July and August 1994, the icebreakers CCG Louis S. St. Laurent and the US Coast Guard Polar Sea carried out the first Canada/USA Joint Scientific Expedition to the Arctic Basin and the NORTH POLE. It involved 60 Canadian and US scientists in about 30 research activities focused on understanding the Arctic region in the era of global change. These included, for example, ocean properties of circulation and ice cover as well as atmospheric radiation and the Greenhouse Effect. Though not originally scheduled as part of the expedition, on August 22, both ships reached the North Pole as the first North American surface ships to do so over the long, unexplored sea route from the western end of the Arctic Ocean.
Canada’s future need for advanced icebreakers is not likely to be as large as that of Russia. The composition of Canada’s icebreaker fleet depends on the level of demand for their services in ice-covered waters. For example, the transportation of oil and gas from the Arctic by water would result in a considerable increase in the icebreaking capability in Canada. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/icebreakers

This is a good resource/listing of ice breakers::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_icebreakers

Kevin Ryan says: September 7, 2013 at 6:57 pm
Hoping for bad things to happen.
Per the comment from Neven’s below, I believe that this is called a ‘kick’…:

Thanks for another solid update, Neven! Despite this year’s uptick–and I think “Weather Strikes Back” is an excellent sound bite for what happened–the death spiral seems to me unbroken. Though if we got a couple more years of weather like this, the modelers who’ve been saying “ice-free in 2030” would look a lot more prescient than was the case last year.
From a political perspective, it’s too bad, though. I was hoping that there would be some sort of ‘kick’ heading into the UNFCCC negotiations in Warsaw this winter. That process may not be in a death spiral, exactly, but it doesn’t look too healthy, either. http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/09/piomas-september-2013.html?cid=6a0133f03a1e37970b019aff3f394c970c#comment-6a0133f03a1e37970b019aff3f394c970c