UPDATE2: get a load of the hilarious announcement from the expedition, where they claim sea ice is disappearing, see update 2 below.
UPDATE3: A film (now a video) has been found from 1912 showing Mawson landing in ice free Commonwealth Bay in 1912. see update 3 below.
UPDATE4: Bad weather has forced the Aurora Australis to back off from its rescue attempt. See below.
UPDATE5: See my opinion piece on why this is a fiasco
There’s quite an ongoing worldwide fascination over the So much sea ice in Antarctica that a research vessel gets stuck, in summer! episode with the ship Akademik Shokalskiy we first reported on WUWT.
I think it was best summed up by this Tweet:
http://twitter.com/ElBuehn/status/416608616070664192
Now, after the first rescue ship The “Snow Dragon” failed:
Our rescue boat, the Xue Long, has had to turn back because the ice was too thick for it to get through. We're now awaiting Aurora Australis
— Alok Jha (@alokjha) December 27, 2013
Which we see in the distance here…
…all eyes are now on the Aurora Australis, which was trapped in ice for 3 weeks last month.
But, even that ship seems to have trouble picking through the sea ice. here is the webcam from the bow of the Aurora Australis:
![A133631800A[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/a133631800a1.jpg?quality=83)
Link to webcam: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
Supposedly, the ice around the Akademik Shokalskiy 3-4 meters thick.
Then there’s the comedy of a scientific research expedition disguised as a junket for activists and reporters, such as this guy, tweeting up a storm from on-board:
The other fellow, Chris Turney, has some science credentials, but also has a propensity for wackadoodle alarmism as we see in this WUWT post: Now it’s 2°C climate change target ‘not safe’
Mostly, it’s a media sponsored event, presumably so they can tell us how terrible things are in Anarctica with melting and such:
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.
Meanwhile, in the “Spirit of Mawson” Spirit of “never let a good crisis go to waste”, the folks on-board have realized the world is watching, and decided to make a pitch for money at their website, presumably to fund next year’s research media junket:
Mother nature doesn’t seem to care about the comedy either way, as Antarctic sea ice is still over 2 standard deviations above normal.
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – Click the pic to view at source========================================================
UPDATE1: Thanks to Roger Tattersall “Tallbloke” who writes:
I’m amused to see Global Warmist Professor Chris Turney’s expedition to Antarctica to retrace polar explorer Douglas Mawson’s route and replicate measurements has run into a spot of bother.
Here’s an old news report on Mawson’s expedition
It looks like that part of the Antarctic was warmer in Mawson’s day than now. In fact the antarctic is currently colder than it has been for a long time. The high latitudes of the Southern Ocean have been cooling since the 1980′s according to SST data.
====================================================
UPDATE2: You can’t make this stuff up. This is from a news.com.au story covering the incident and the announcement made by the expedition:
Um, no, sea ice isn’t disappearing right now, it is growing in the Arctic and within two standard deviations:
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – click to view at sourceTwo standard deviations above normal in the Antarctic:
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – Click the pic to view at sourceAnd above normal globally:
Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group – Click the pic to view at source========================================================
UPDATE3:
A video has been found from 1912 showing Mawson landing in ice free Commonwealth Bay in 1912.
========================================================
UPDATE4: The Times of India reports:
SYDNEY: Bad weather on Monday forced back an Australian icebreaker struggling to reach a scientific expedition ship stranded off Antarctica, while snow and winds have prevented a helicopter rescue, authorities said.
The Aurora Australis made it to within 10 nautical miles of the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which is stuck in an ice field, before retreating in the face of freezing winds and snow showers.
“Adverse weather conditions have resulted in the Australian Antarctic Division vessel Aurora Australis moving back into open water this afternoon,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
==========================================================
Related articles
- Rescue near for trapped Antarctic ship (foxnews.com)
- Cracks in ice new hope for stranded Antarctica ship (worldnews.nbcnews.com)
- Chinese icebreaker forced to cut Antarctic rescue attempt short (ctvnews.ca)
- Rescue of icebound Antarctic ship faces setback (foxnews.com)
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Here you go – enjoy the scientific explanations from Dr Karl – I used to respect this man
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/watch/20533411/dr-karl-explains-antarctica-mission/
“They are in serious trouble.”
I agree. The ship is probably already a write-off if there has really been a hull breach, even if it is above the waterline. In that case she is unlikely to make it back to Bluff (the nearest harbour) across 3000 kilometers of the stormiest seas in the World. I’ve been in a sister ship in these very waters and she rolled more than 30 degrees.
A helicopter evacuation won’t be easy. These ships don’t have a helipad so they will have to prepare a landing ground on the ice, which is apparently covered by thick wet snow. And landing a helo on snow-covered ground is very treacherous in anything but good weather. Trekking any appreciable distance to one of the rescue ships across the ice will be very difficult without skies (and I imagine australians aren’t very good skiers, though the russian crew might be).
The media hub thing is funny too. You would think that they would have realised that the media would be burying this story because it doesn’t fit the alarmist narrative.
What a waste of fossil fuel this ice breaking business is. The scientists on board should be left to collect data until the ice melts ( it is summer after all ) – maybe lessons will quietly be learned?
OK . I am wondering if anyone can answer a thought.
The location of the Akademik Shokalskiy, based on the GPS locator that Chris Turney is using, is being updated on the Live Tracker embedded on the SpiritofMawson website.
Based on those coordinates, the stranded ship has drifted northwest by about 5 nautical miles.
Since that time, three different ships have attempted to reach them.
One particular time, the Snowdragon was said to have got within 6 nautical miles before backing out.
Then just recently, the Aurora Australis had came within 10 nautical miles before having to back out.
Now knowing that the Australis has better ice-breaking capabilities than the Snow Dragon, then I can only presume that there must be more ice-pack than there was just a few days ago.
Based on this information, The ice-pack must be growing in size, not reducing in size, during a time when it should be melting, due to the upcoming Southern Hemisphere sea ice minimum.
Since the Akademik Shokalskiy is drifing Northwest and the latest attempt to rescue them was farther out than the previous attempt, then it stands to reason that ice cover is larger than it was a week ago.
By my calculations, sea ice extent is greater than 85%, and extends nearly 16 or more nautical miles more than it had before the ship got stranded.
Yet, using Cryosphere Todays 30-day animation of SH Sea-Ice Extent, the location where the attempted rescue is taking place shows no such anomaly. At no time does the data at Cryosphere Today show any sea ice growth taking place. Each image since 11/22 shows only a reduction.
Now supposedly, the data is representative of sea ice above 15% cover or more.
So, either Cryosphere Today can’t tell the difference between 10% cover and 85% cover, or can’t measure sea-ice cover in distances less than 20miles.
Or there is some other reason for this discrepency.
Can anyone help me out with this.
Media hub picture is a hoot. They have been rearranging their deckchairs!
This is a very serious problem and the mirthful responses should probably be toned down until their fate is known
Can we all start jumping for joy after they die ?? then
Guess: 2800 tons of CO2 for whole fiasco, including detours for 3 ice breakers and hot air spewed from propagandist Guardian reporters and tax-funded BBC reporters.
at $0.50 a tonne that’s only $1400. Rescue $3,000,000.
“tty says:
December 30, 2013 at 1:16 am
“They are in serious trouble.”
I agree. The ship is probably already a write-off if there has really been a hull breach, even if it is above the waterline. In that case she is unlikely to make it back to Bluff (the nearest harbour) across 3000 kilometers of the stormiest seas in the World. I’ve been in a sister ship in these very waters and she rolled more than 30 degrees.”
More than 100 years ago some crazy Norwegians froze up in wooden ships in the Arctic and drifted with the ice( current and wind) for many months. I find it hard to belive that the trapped ship in Antarctic, since it’s build for polar regions, is going to have a hull breach.
Climate for all.
I may have an answer to your question;
Last year I wrote this piece about Arctic ice levels in the 1920 to 1940 period.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/
The extract below is taken from the much extended version of this article (pdf available on request)
Whilst it concerns the arctic I think the comments also relate to the Antarctic and might explain why there appears to be such difficulty in determining actual sea ice amounts.
———- —–
…Of course, professional arctic ice researchers are aware of these factors and adjust data accordingly but the preceding does raise the question as to whether x amount of ice in the satellite era (1979 onwards) is really the same as x amount in the period prior to that, derived through climatological or physical observations in often difficult conditions by such as whalers, brings us to the thorny question of what the definition of ice actually is.
This was noted by the author in the library of the Scott Polar institute in Cambridge and has parallels in one of the news items previously quoted;
‘Observational data of the drifting station 1950-51-by M Somov -Volume 1 of 3 of this Russian North pole station on an ice floe.’
Middle of June onwards ‘the melting of the snow and ice took place very quickly although the air temperature remained close to freezing’
‘the sun shone…could walk about without a coat…some even tried to get a sun tan.’
‘because of the thaw an enormous amount of water accumulated on the ice’
‘walking was only possible if one wore high rubber boots reaching above the knees’ (because of the water sitting on the ice.
‘many problems because of the thawing.’
The book described how later in the season some high spots became dry and these were little hillocks in a sea of icy water sitting on solid ice. This caused me to ask the following question of NSIDC;
“ …..how did pre satellite researchers estimating sea ice extent tell the difference between water, water floating on ice, and solid ice, and how can satellites differentiate between the three states? I was struck by Russian reports from the 1950’s at The Scott Polar institute in Cambridge when staff at the floating research stations commented about using Wellington boots in order to walk around the station, and how little dry ice islands eventually formed by the end of the summer surrounded by water on top of ice.”
I received the following reply from Julienne Stroeve ;(reproduced with permission)
“ … using passive microwave data it is very easy to tell the difference between ice and water as the dielectric constant differs quite a bit and this is reflected in large differences in the microwave emission. The main advantage of using passive microwave is that it can see the ice even if it’s cloudy or dark. There is a problem however in summer when melt ponds form on the ice since the sea ice algorithms then underestimate how much ice there really is (they think it’s open water). That’s one reason why we focus on extent rather than true ice area for the NSIDC sea ice news and analysis web site.
Visible and thermal imagery provides higher spatial resolution but is often hampered by clouds. Trying to do this work using earlier visible and thermal imagery requires the scientists to go through each image and manually filter out the clouds and determine where the ice is.”
tonyb
“Santa says:
December 30, 2013 at 1:42 am”
Depends on the quality of the steel used in hull construction. It’s an old Russian vessel. Too much cold for tool long and ordinary carbon steel becomes brittle and shatter like ceramics. Given the 3rd icebreaker can’t get to it there is now talk of abandoning the ship. The Australian icebreaker is rated at being able to break upto 1.5m of ice. The ship is, apparently, stuck in upto 4m ice. I don’t see how this ship with survive unless there is a weather/wind change.
@climatereason
Very understandable.
Having said that then, it would stand to reason that satellite altimetry cant conclusively determine, with any certainty what the actual ice cover is. For either more ice cover or less ice cover, if what you say is true.
Sounds like a few billion tax-payer dollars are being wasted futily.
There could actually be 20 to 30 % more ice-cover and we would never know it.
Not only would this type of corrupted data effect SH sea ice, but NH sea ice as well.
For all we know. the minimum sea ice cover for 2012 could have been a record high.
Just have a lazy interpreter not wishing to extrapolate data a few times and voila, arctic record minimum.
Brian H says:
December 29, 2013 at 7:07 pm
vukcevic says: It would be wise for the local penguins to keep their distance, even a starving greenie could turn into a veracious carnivore!
Brian H
@vikcevuk;
voracious, please! Vowels are not interchangeable.
Hi Brain (now we are even)
The Veracious Vegan is a greenie website for non-carnivores who call themselves vegans, providing long list of such recopies from artichoke tagliatelle to yuba roulade whatever that happen to be.
I don’t think this ship is going to have a hull breach. When ice pressure increase it should “float up” on the ice?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Shokalskiy
“Akademik Shuleykin-class ice-strengthened ship, built in Finland in 1982 and originally used for oceanographic research.[7] In 1998 it was fully refurbished to serve as a research ship for Arctic and Antarctic work.[5] It was named after the Russian oceanographer Yuly Shokalsky.[8] The ship has two [9] passenger decks, with dining rooms, a bar, a library, and a sauna, and accommodates 54 passengers.[5] It is owned by the Russian Federation’s Far Eastern Hydrometeorological Research Institute, Vladivostok and currently chartered to Aurora Expeditions, an Australian expedition cruise line.[2][5] In 2011, the Akademik Shokalskiy sailed cruises along the coast of Russia[10] and to East Antarctica.[11] Her sister ships are Akademik Shuleykin, Arnold Veymer, Akademik Gamburtsev, Professor Molchanov, Professor Multanovskiy, Geolog Dmitriy Nalivkin, Professor Polshkov, Professor Khromov.”
Australia has snow and ski fields. Plenty of Aussies can ski..
The hull should be angeled out wards so that when it breaks ice it “floats” up on the ice and breake it down and to the side. When it’s stuck and ice pressure increase it should float up on the ice.
It was built in Finland 1982, also a good year for Bordeaux.
No polar bears down there, but there are leopard seals, which can weigh up to 1300 pounds and be nearly 12 feet long. Usually they lunch on penguins, but will eat other seals if hungry, and have been known to pop up through holes in the ice and flop over the ice chasing humans. Perhaps they mistake humans for seals. When they can’t catch us they must think we are very fast seals. They display no fear of humans, and when well-fed have been reported to bring humans dead penguins, as if we need feeding (or fattening-up for later.)
To make this adventure more interesting the stranded fools need to trek across the ice, and have a run-in with a leopard seal. I won’t settle for less.
[snip . . OT . . mod]
http://www.ibtimes.com/3-rescue-ships-reach-mv-akademik-shokalskiy-russian-tourist-research-ship-trapped-antarctic-ice
“The ship is reinforced against ice and well adapted to the conditions,” Alvin Stone, a spokesman for the voyage operator, said. “It’s just stuck in ice. There’s no danger at all.”
Appearance of the ‘office’ on deck has changed somewhat
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/12/30/1388395387693/79806a54-3040-42b0-ad7e-4b00e8189db2-620×413.jpeg
(see Katabasis December 29, 2013 at 10:41 pm )
Dave says:
Anyone taking bets that this will be reported in an honest manner by our ever-so-unbiased media?
No. The BBC is remarkably silent about it and the Guardian only provides a minimum reporting with either CiF disabled or CiF heavily censored after all the ribald jokes about “global warming” and the CO2-generating rescue attempts. Even the mildest mention of AGW gets deleted by the Stalinist Guardian, as can be determined by all the outraged posters that have managed to get their observations published on the Daily Mail website instead.
ClimateForAll says:
December 29, 2013 at 10:23 pm
Images from the stern of the Aurora Australis………… Someone got out on the deck and wrote into the snow……’GREEN’….
Not sure what that means.
Was it a deckhand making fun of the green movement?
Was it one of the media members on board letting us know GREEN is to the rescue?
—–
No, .. it is the only word they know. They use it in place of ‘Help us or we are f****d’ or ‘Hello World’, ‘We have not seen any polar bears’
Not only that, you can see how warm it is because everyone is running around in their swimsuits.
Somebody in the thread asks “who pays?”
I am currently working for a Marine Insurance (P&I) club.
The insurers will be trying like mad to share the cover for this incident. Believe me, some serious questions will be being asked about who the master took meteorological/hydrological advice from before they set off and will be seeking some recovery from them if they gave bad advice. I’m pretty sure they will be calling this reckless. As with most insurance reckless behaviour is a reason not to pay out. The costs then come down to the vessel owners. Unless the owners shifted the responsibility to the operator. Whoever it comes down to it is going to be expensive.
I’m not in the office today, I’ll be going in tomorrow, I’ll see what the industry buzz is.
The master will be unlikely to be taking any more ships out. His is the final decision on where and when they go.
“The ice became too thick for us to penetrate,” says Doyle.
“There was just nowhere for us to go,” he says.
Behind us is one giant meringue, in front, open water. Doyle decides to sit and wait until the weather clears. Not much can happen until then, but a helicopter evacuation of the Shokalskiy passengers is looking likely.
http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/akademik-shokalskiy-rescue-how-mission-came-undone-by-one-giant-meringue-20131230-3036s.html
The BBC website has all but abandoned the story for now. It’s been relegated to the Science and Environment page, sitting in third place after an important story about eel numbers. It hasn’t been updated for 10 hours during which the Aurora Australis has come and gone. If they don’t update it soon their readers will wonder if there’s a fourth ice-breaker coming to the rescue.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25540040