For the latest, see this new story. and this opinion piece on why this is a fiasco
UPDATE: Turns out this “research” vessel was mostly a taxpayer funded junket for getting video stories to BBC in the UK and ABC in Australia, see update2 below.
It is summer in the southern hemisphere and yet there is still signifiicantly above normal amounts of sea ice present as the passengers and crew of one tour ship discovered. The icebreakers Xue Long and Aurora Australis, and a French research vessel Astrolabe are cruising towards the Akademik Shokalskiy at full throttle for rescue. Photos and maps follow.
PR from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, Dec 25th, 2013:
Search and rescue of passenger vessel trapped in ice underway
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) is coordinating a search and rescue for a Russian passenger ship beset by ice approximately 1500 nautical miles south of Hobart.
AMSA’s Rescue Coordination Centre Australia (RCC Australia) was contacted by the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in the United Kingdom on Christmas morning.
The Falmouth MRCC received a distress message via satellite from a Russian flagged vessel, MV Akademik Shokalskiy, with 74 people about 7.20am (AEDT).
The ship is in the Australian Search and Rescue region, 100 nautical miles east of the French base Dumont D’Urville.
RCC Australia assumed coordination of the incident and issued a broadcast to icebreaking vessels in the area.
Three ships with icebreaking capability have responded, including the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) vessel Aurora Australis, and are now en route to the area.
The closest vessels are at least two days sailing time away.
Further updates will be provided when more information is available.
###
Source: http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/documents/25122013AkademikShokalskiyUpdate1_Media_Release.pdf
===============================================================
This is apparently an image tweeted by somebody on-board the Akademik Shokalskiy, showing the ice around it:
AMSA is now coordinating the response to a ship beset by ice about 1500nm south of Hobart. http://t.co/P4zO9RUMth http://t.co/S5ST1wgwbN
— AMSA News (@AMSA_News) December 25, 2013
UPDATE:
The expedition is being led by Chris Turney, “climate scientist”, who has “set up a carbon refining company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.” The purpose of the expedition is “to discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.”
http://www.christurney.com/ (h/t to Sagebrush Gardener)
It seems they found out what the “environmental changes taking place in the south.” are.
From the WUWT sea ice page, Antarctic Sea Ice is more than 2 standard deviations above normal:
![S_timeseries[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/s_timeseries1.png?quality=75)
According to this sitrep report for one of the rescue vessels, the Aurora Australis the Akademik Shokalskiy is trapped in sea ice in the Commonwealth Bay region of Antarctica.
This is what the current sea ice coverage looks like at the south pole with the approximate ship location marked:
Image source: National Snow and Ice Data Center via the WUWT sea ice page.
Wikipedia says about the ship:
MV Akademik Shokalskiy (Russian: Академик Шокальский) is an Akademik Shuleykin-class ice-strengthened ship, built in Finland in 1982 and originally used for oceanographic research.[5] In 1998 it was fully refurbished to serve as a research ship for Arctic and Antarctic work.[3] It was named after the Russian oceanographer Yuly Shokalsky.[6] The ship has two [7] passenger decks, with dining rooms, a bar, a library, and a sauna, and accommodates 54 passengers.[3] It is currently operated by Aurora Expeditions, an Australian expedition cruise line.[3][8] In 2011, the Akademik Shokalskiy sailed cruises along the coast of Russia[9] and to East Antarctica.[10] Her sister ships are Akademik Shuleykin, Arnold Veymer, Akademik Gamburtsev, Professor Molchanov, Professor Multanovskiy, Geolog Dmitriy Nalivkin, Professor Polshkov, Professor Khromov.
UPDATE2:
WUWT reader “pat” writes at 2013/12/26 at 1:59 pm
seems this expedition was more a BBC/Guardian/ABC CAGW exercise!
18 Dec: Guardian: The Guardian lays claim to Antarctica – in pictures Journalists Alok Jha and Laurence Topham have landed in Antarctica with the 2013 Australasian Antarctic Expedition Documentary filmmaker Laurence Topham lines up a shot from the bows. Photograph: Alok Jha/Guardian…
http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/gallery/2013/dec/18/guardian-antarctica-pictures
Guardian: Laurence Topham, documentary filmmaker
In 2007 he worked for Current TV, where he edited over 50 short-form documentaries for terrestrial broadcast…
http://www.theguardian.com/open-weekend/laurence-topham
Guardian: Science: Antarctica live (MASSIVE COVERAGE, NO HINT ABOUT THE SHIP’S CURRENT PREDICAMENT!)
http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live
26 Dec: BBC: Andrew Luck-Baker: Science continues for trapped Australasian Antarctic expedition Science reporter Andrew Luck-Baker is on board the Russian research vessel Shokalskiy, covering the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013 for the BBC World Service programme Discovery…
Tantalisingly, a low band of grey sky to the Northeast suggests clear water lies not so many kilometres away. The grey colour is light reflected from open water. The early Antarctic explorers named this colour phenomenon “water sky” and used it to navigate their route through the treacherous pack ice…
In addition to the Russian crew of 22, the expedition team consists of 18 professional scientists from Australia and New Zealand, and 22 volunteer science assistants. They are members of the public, ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s. They paid to join the scientific adventure…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25519059
25 Nov: ABC Lateline: $1.5 million Australian expedition to Antarctica Professor Chris Turney from the University of NSW is mounting the largest Australian science expeditions to the Antarctic with an 85-person team to try to answer questions about how climate change in the frozen continent might be already shifting weather patterns in Australia.
ABC’s MARGOT O’NEILL: The research stakes are high. Antarctica is one of the great engines driving the world’s oceans, winds and weather, especially in Australia. But there’s ominous signs of climate change.
CHRIS TURNEY: The Southern Hemisphere westerly winds encircle Antarctica, and over the last 20 or 30 years or so, they’ve been pushing further south. Now – so actually in a way it’s almost like Antarctica’s withdrawing itself from the rest of the world…
EMMA ALBERICI: And tomorrow night, in the second part of this special report, could the British Antarctic explorer Robert Scott have lived? We look at how Professor Turney discovered that choosing the right team can be a matter of life and death.
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I have this mental image of a band of ice-encrusted Gorons in pursuit of the Antarctic Riviera of warmist lore, frozen fingers falling off in the snow, trudging exhaustedly along beside their haggard and bony dogsled team, eyeing one another in nervous recollection of old Donner Party stories.
When out of the white roars a trio of enormous snow-crawlers, thousands of gallons of Gaia’s most useful hydrocarbons fueling the rumbling diesels. Rumbling to a stop, a dozen warm and well-equipped crew march down the ramp and approach the frostbitten marchers.
“Thank God you’re here to rescue us!”
“What the hell are you talking about? We’re from the Humane Society. We’re here for the dogs. You fools can find your own way out.”
And they unharness the huskies, walk them into the crawlers, latch up the hatches, and disappear into the distance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_claims_in_Antarctica
Just in case you wonder about zones of influence. Fishing and whaling in the sub antarctic is a matter of international treaty. Japanese whale there.
Yes there is a Russian station. complete with chapel and priest.http://www.thinkstockphotos.com.au/image/stock-photo-russian-chapel/147009979… so Merry Christmas.
Nature consistently rewards with exceptionally freezing conditions this type of expedition, whose intention is to carry out research on GW. Hence providing many of us with a great deal of innocent merriment. Has anyone ever compiled a list of these events? I forget the names of most of them, but one recent example was the Catlin expedition.I recall one from a couple of years ago when the ITN science correspondent, Lawrence McGinty, a committed warmer, was part of an expedition to the Hudson Bay, where he was to report on GW. The expedition was abandoned after blizzards rendered the trip impossible.
Hot off the press; Chinese icebreaker stuck…ice thickness exceeds ice breaking capabilities. Last reported six NM from expedition vessel. Rescue may take another two days.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/27/world/antarctica-ship-stuck/#comment-1178287023
NevenA says:December 26, 2013 at 10:01 am
Looks like Gail Combs got there first – what springs to mind is the bipolar seesaw, connected to a phenomenon know as “heat piracy” – the transport of heat between NH and SH in currents across the equator. Google-scholar bipolar seesaw and you will find a lot of papers on century-millenial scale ocean circulation with quite good simulation of events like the Younger Dryas for instance. Tzedakis published a paper recently on the bipolar seesaw being a marker of both beginning and end of interglacials, however not to sound alarmist, the seesaw according to Tzedakis appears 3000 years after the end of an interglacial. He was referring to an extreme seesaw involving huge oceanic ice rafting events detectable as midocean deposits. I guess it’s possible that the small seesaw and heat piracy done by the Carribean current (south to north) could layer grow to something larger.
(Sorry no links – this is from my mobile.)
Could later grow
It sounds like we the public are paying for these guys and all that equiptment to go to the Antarctic.
Then we get to pay to rescue the them as well.
Australia often fines the captain and company for rescue costs. Lets hope we can recoop that money at least.
From one of the progress reports:
Geologist Greg Mortimer, one of the expedition leaders and a veteran Antarctic scientist, described it as a “treasure, one of the last untouched areas of the world”.
They then go on to say that McQuarie Island was devastated by hunters last century and describe it as “pristine”
Do these idiots actually read what they write?
Let them stay there and find their own way back as did Sir john Franklin in 1845 when searching for the North West passage in the Arctic( alas he never made it back and the remaining crew took to eating one another )
MSM all saying ship trapped since Christmas Day, but various early reports said they’d been trapped since Monday 23 Dec.
27 Dec: NPR Blog: VIDEO: Rescuers Are Drawing Near To Ship Stuck In Antarctic
“There’s a lot of relief amongst the team and there’s lots of happy faces,” expedition leader Chris Turney said Friday in a fresh video posted from the deck of the MV Akademik Shokalskiy — an expedition vessel that’s been trapped by Antarctic Sea ice since Monday…
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/27/257538107/video-rescuers-are-drawing-near-to-ship-stuck-in-antarctic
BBC audio below is available until 1 Jan. already talking about being trapped by sea ice:
much talk about the “conundrum” of the sea ice expanding which might be indication we may see greater sea level rise than predicted.
26 mins: 24 Dec: VIDEO: BBC: The Return to Mawson’s Antarctica – Part Two
Alok Jha (Guardian) and Andrew Luck-Baker (BBC) continue to follow the scientists on the ongoing Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013. Ice, the oceans and climate change are the themes this week as one of the expedition scientists makes a troubling finding…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01n9gcv/Discovery_The_Return_to_Mawsons_Antarctica_Part_Two/
BBC: The Return to Mawson’s Antarctica – Part One
Duration: 29 minutes
First broadcast: Monday 16 December 2013
Join the scientists of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013, as they go about their experiments and seek adventure at the windiest place on earth…
This remote area hasn’t been studied systematically for 100 years, so the expedition will reveal any changes that have taken place as a result of climate change.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01n1dtv
given this story has attracted worldwide attention – however inaccurate the reporting is – it is still hardly mentioned on australian news reports, even tho our scientists organised the trip & we have fairfax & abc journos on board.
ALL MSM ARE PUSHING THE MAWSON ANGLE, YET ALL THE PRE-TRIP MEDIA WAS ABOUT “CLIMATE CHANGE”:
6 Dec: SMH: Fairfax Media trip to Antarctica to see the effects of climate change
But global warming is an important story, and the trip will give Fairfax Media a rare opportunity to visit the continent most acutely affected by global warming. Antarctica is climate change ground zero. The data that scientists gather will play a crucial role in future climate models…
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/blogs/66-degrees-south/fairfax-media-trip-to-antarctica-to-see-the-effects-of-climate-change-20131206-2ywfj.html
just like ABC, Guardian, here is the Fairfax page for the Expeditiion, again with no update since the ship got stuck. Cosier also works for ABC:
SMH: 66 Degrees South
Science Editor Nicky Phillips and video journalist Colin Cosier are spending four weeks in Antarctica
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/blogs/66-degrees-south/fairfax-media-trip-to-antarctica-to-see-the-effects-of-climate-change-20131206-2ywfj.html
Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 1m
Unfortunately Snow Dragon can’t get through. It’s standing by & waiting on another vessel to help. Everyone well. #spiritofmawson
Ya, but the Obama Care web site is fixed, now all they have to do is enroll, pay the fee and all will be well as , sure it is there in the 2700 pages of the transfer of wealth there is something for these fellow travelers.
just saying
RACookPE1978 says:
December 26, 2013 at 11:30 am
Oh. By the way.
At today’s rate of increase in Antarctic sea ice extents, the waters south of Cape Horn will be blocked to year-round sea traffic within 8-12 years.
………..
And before the end of the century, Cape Town harbour will be blocked by ice in the winter. These trends do continue unabated, don’t they?
It appears that the Chinese ice breaker – rescue ship had to abandon it’s attempt to free the Cagw research team. With some luck, they will remain trapped until it’s time to leave to return to Hobart and thus avoid setting foot on the pristine continent with the possibility and bringing contaminants. I’m sure the greenies will be happy 🙂
A Russian ship full of old famous Warmongers on an AGW propaganda cruise to show how Antarctica is melting away are trapped in massive ice sheets and need rescuing by a Chinese icebreaker.
Sounds like the pitch for a Hollywood B movie.
A movie plot made even better by the Chinese ice breaker getting trapped in the ice and needing rescued too.
listen from 37:20 into the 55 min program:
27 Dec: BBC Newshour: Kiribati, mentions first climate change refugee turned down by NZ.
says here is island’s President – has to cut off because wrong tape comes up.
moves instead on to Antarctica & BBC’s Andrew Luck-Baker in Antarctica. says they’re trapped. plays report from a couple of days previous.
Luck-Baker: surveying ice edge East Antarctica. if all this ice melts, sea level would ris, e by 53(?) metres – ***but to be frank, i don’t want to talk about climate change & sea level rise and whatnot…i just want to describe what the place looks like… stunning, etc.
next item: back to Kiribati story:
(Quote from Island’s President)
THEN to Robert McLeman (associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, author of book, Climate and Human Migration) :
McLeman: Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City etc to be uninhabitable.
most will relocate within China, but middle class will migrate externally.
BBC: with tens or possibly hundreds of millions on the move…should people living of higher ground be fearful.
McLeman: if we look at big migrant-receiving countries, Canada, US, UK, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand…we could accommodate this within our existing migration programs…
BBC: strong misgivings in UK about migration.
McLeman: that’s a good point. we have rapidly aging populations so, in 30-40 years, we need young labour migrants just to maintain our social economic well-being. should plan ahead and do it in systematic fashion.
BBC: is it your suspicion that, even if we took concerted effort now to stop global warming to try to reverse or control warming, it’s probably too late, & there will have to be significant migrations, blah blah.
McLeman: u r absolutely right, even if we curtailed greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, we’re locked into a certain amount of change in the global environment…
so we do have to deal with the root causes, which is the greenhouse gas emissions in the first place.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01nbn7j
more McLeman:
23 Dec: GeorgiaStraight: Daniel Tseghay: Is Canada prepared for climate refugees?
“In Bangladesh, the estimate is that 30 to 50 million people will be displaced by rising sea level by 2050,’’ Mohammad Zaman, the executive director of the Vancouver-based Society for Bangladesh Climate Justice (SBCJ), says in a phone interview with the Georgia Straight.
“The crisis has already started,’’ the social-sector specialist continues, pointing out that people are being displaced every day. On October 24, Zaman—who works as a consultant for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank—and his organization held an event at the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Issues to address the issue facing Bangladesh, situating it within the global phenomenon of climate migration…
“If you’re looking 50 years from now, that’s when the real impacts of sea-level rise start to manifest,’’ Robert McLeman, professor of geography at Wilfrid Laurier University, says during a phone interview with the Straight. “That’s when food supplies start to become under threat because of all these changes we’re making to climate systems.’’
McLeman is the author of the just-published Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges (Cambridge University Press). “We’ll get these large populations in places like Vietnam, coastal China, and Bangladesh, where you’d have tens of millions of people living within a few metres of sea level, and that’s where we’ll see very large-scale displacement.’’…
A 2009 report by the International Organization for Migration estimates that there will be between 200 million and 1 billion migrants due to climate change by 2050…
http://www.straight.com/news/553886/canada-prepared-climate-refugees
Wilfrid Laurier Uni: Robert McLeman
Academic Background
BA (Geography) 1989 – The University of Western Ontario
MSc (Environmental Management) 1995 – University of Hong Kong
PhD (Geography) 2005 – University of Guelph
Biography
Dr. McLeman specializes in research on the human dimensions of environmental change, with particular attention to the relationship between environment and human migration; rural adaptation to climatic variability and change; and, fostering citizen participation in environmental science. A former Canadian foreign service officer, Dr. McLeman previously worked at Canadian diplomatic missions in Belgrade, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Seattle and Vienna. In recent years, he has advised government agencies in Canada, the US, and Europe on issues related to climate change, labour migration, and security. An award-winning teacher, Dr. McLeman uses a range of media, methods and real-world examples to introduce students to the the systematic study of human-environment relations. Click here to read his blog
http://www.wlu.ca/homepage.php?grp_id=13195&f_id=35
That’s what happens when you set your course on a model rather than reality.
I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the ice causing the problem is first year ice. In summer, sea ice in the Antarctic goes to far lower extent values than in the Arctic. We hear about first year ice in the Arctic is rotten. I don’t think so.
Things are not going well in AGW Land
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/27/22069917-vessel-sent-to-rescue-explorer-ship-encounters-heavy-antarctic-ice#comments
Hmmm….Can’t helicopters reach them?
Is this a “spin” of a “Gore Effect” event or is there a real reason the people can’t be rescued by chopper? I don’t know. I’m really just asking. (Maybe they’re outside the range of choppers?)
The Chinese vessel stuck …
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/27/world/antarctica-ship-stuck/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Any other vessel can go home, before …
Why isn’t this story in the Climate Change section of the Guardian? Are they worried about irony? There is a Guardian chap and global warming Dr. on the ship I vaguely recollect. Sorry if I am mistaken, I just don’t have energy for reading this late evening.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/27/antarctic-mission-icebreaker-delay-rescue
timely! MSM picking up story that began in Halifax Chronicle Herald on 12 Dec, which has already been covered by some MSM:
27 Dec: Huffington Post: Message In A Bottle Found In Arctic Glacier Ultimately Reveals Global Warming In Region (PHOTO)
More than half a century ago, on July 10, 1959, American glaciologist and explorer Paul T. Walker was working in a remote region of the Canadian Arctic, the Los Angeles Times reports. In a quirky stroke of genius, Walker left a handwritten note to any scientists who might come behind him, and he stuck the message in a bottle under a pile of rocks.
“To Whom it May Concern: This and a similar cairn 21.3 feet to the west were set on July 10, 1959,” the note states. “The distance from this cairn to the glacier edge about 4 ft. from the rock floor is 168.3 feet.”…
Dr. Warwick F. Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec City, revealed the find earlier in December and said reading the famous names of Walker and his colleague Albert Crary gave him goosebumps.
Vincent, a biologist, and his colleague Denis Sarrazin found the note over the summer in a very remote area near the edge of a glacier, he told GrindTV Outdoor.
“It’s a story about climate change, but it is also a story about the incredibly brave and strong men who worked in this extreme high Arctic environment in the 1950s—back before GPS and sat phone technology,” Vincent told the outlet. “This is the most remote part of North America, and the coldest coastal zone (average temperature -18C). This also makes the evidence of substantial glacial retreat of great interest.”.
The pair carried out Walker’s wish, measuring the distance to the glacier in question, just as Walker had done decades earlier. Vincent and Sarrazin’s measurement revealed that the glacier had retreated 233 feet since 1954…
Given the fact that there is still such noticeable loss in glacial ice, this special message should be heeded by scientists around the world, Vincent added.
“Paul Walker’s message from the past is a wake-up call to how fast our global climate is already changing, and it signals much larger changes in the future that may affect us all,” he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/27/message-in-a-bottle-global-warming-glacier-arctic_n_4509358.html?utm_hp_ref=green
12 Dec: HalifaxChronicleHerald, Canada: Selena Ross: 54-year-old message in bottle helps chronicle death of glacier
The 1.2-metre gap between the cairn and the glacier in 1959 has widened to 101.5 metres today because the glacier has shrunk, said Vincent…
He got in touch with Ohio State University, where Walker worked, and promised to send a copy of the Laval work to their archives.
Ian Howat, a glaciologist at Ohio State, said Wednesday he was surprised to hear about the message in a bottle and wanted to ask some older colleagues if they remember any historical connection with Walker.
“I’m sure folks here would be interested in seeing it,” Howat said.
***He won’t get his wish very easily, except in photo form. Vincent and Denis Sarrazin, who found the bottle, left it in the cairn with the letter inside.
But they added their own note, asking the next person who finds it to measure the distance to the glacier and report back to Quebec City.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1173466-54-year-old-message-in-bottle-helps-chronicle-death-of-glacier