UPDATE: So much for that…
Sea ice conditions are now likely to delay today’s planned rescue of passengers from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy. http://t.co/snGYZnqmNM
— AMSA News (@AMSA_News) January 2, 2014
And now it is apparently on again
AMSA is awaiting confirmation that the Antarctica rescue operation has begun.
— AMSA News (@AMSA_News) January 2, 2014
See video below.
Aurora Australis has advised AMSA that the 52 passengers from the Akademik Shokalskiy are now on board.
— AMSA News (@AMSA_News) January 2, 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_13rQBXKa0A
7.30am AEDT: 2nd January 2014
Rescue operations likely to commence shortly in Antarctica
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s (AMSA) Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC Australia) was advised this morning by the MV Akademik Shokalskiy that weather conditions have improved in the area and rescue operations are likely to commence shortly by helicopter.
Wind in the area is now down to 10 knots and visibility has improved. Weather conditions are expected to remain favourable over the next 36 hours.
The helicopter on board the Chinese flagged vessel Xue Long will be used to rescue the passengers from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy.
This rescue will be a complex operation involving a number of steps and subject to factors such as weather.
RCC Australia has been advised that all 52 passengers will leave the MV Akademik Shokalskiy. All 22 crew members are expected to remain with the vessel.
The passengers will be rescued by helicopter in groups of 12 and will be initially transported to the Xue Long. The rescue is expected to be undertaken in a total of seven flights. The first five flights will rescue passengers and the remaining two flights will transfer luggage and equipment.
Each return flight is expected to take about 45 minutes. The journey will cover a distance of about 12 nautical miles between the MV Akademik Shokalskiy and the Xue Long. The helicopter component of the rescue operation is expected to take at least five hours dependent on weather conditions.
The Aurora Australis will then use its barge to transfer all 52 passengers on board their vessel. The barge can take up to 22 people at a time. The journey between the Xue Long and the Aurora Australis is a distance of about two nautical miles.
RCC Australia continues to coordinate the incident and is in regular contact with all vessels involved and continues to monitor the situation. The vessels involved are also in close contact with each other via VHF radio.
The search and rescue operation commenced on Christmas morning AEDT after the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in the United Kingdom received a distress message via satellite from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy. The distress message and subsequent coordination of the incident was passed to RCC Australia, who is the responsible search and rescue authority for this area.
Media Note: Media are advised to keep an eye on AMSA’s Twitter feed @AMSA_News for the latest information relating to this rescue. Details for facilitating audio grabs and vision will be issued in due course.
Click to access 02012014AkademikShokalskiyUpdate9_Media_Release.pdf
It’s not over yet despite the passenger rescue.
The Polar Star‘s last reported position:
That course and speed puts her into Sidney in 10 hours, 43 minutes. It has obviously been decided the Polar Star is not going to be required to rescue the passengers or crew of the Akademik Shokalskiy and the ship itself will hold together until the wind changes and blows the pack ice back out to sea so she can escape on her own.
Pat –
Thanks very much for the link to National Geographic. The talk of continent of Antarctica being part of the region of Antarctica. Depending on how that region is defined, it could be considered to be a fifth of the Southern Hemisphere. But Oliver clearly specified that he was talking about the continent of Antarctica.
The Southern Hemisphere is usually quoted as being 19.1% land. On my calculator, that’s about 48,7 million km². Antarctica is officially quoted as having an area of 14 million km² which would mean it accounts for roughly a bit less than 30% of the land in the Southern Hemisphere. This may seem like an overstatement because we are used to seeing Antarctica as a rather modest island continent at the bottom of the globe. But the figures say it is close to double the area of Australia (7.7 million km²) and not far short of the area of South America (17.8 million km², some of which is in the north of the equator).
The fact that the Southern Hemisphere is four-fifths ocean is the main reason why its average temperature varies much less than the Northern Hemisphere’s does between summer and winter. Now that I see that 30% of that 19% of the hemisphere’s land is so close to the pole that it doesn’t play much part in the summer warming process, it further clarifies the huge difference between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the amounts of land at temperate latitudes that give the Milankovitch cycles something to work with.
What really frustrates me and boils my P**S is that, no matter how long the rescue is delayed or how long it takes or even if the Russian research vessel is lost, holed by ice and sunk, that no matter what, the warmists will insist on using any pseudo-science to propagandise that the disastrous mission was interrupted by increased ice because of human induced climate change.
I remember every single Antarctic ice minimum, each March during the 2000’s the mainstream media would drag out the same picture of the massive straight crack in the Antarctic ice and use that as proof of escalating ice loss in the Antarctic due to global warming. Global warming was undoubtedly (in their minds) the cause of Antarctic ICE LOSS.
Their argument was increased use of fossil fuels pumped out more CO2 which warms the planet causing the ice at the edges of the South Pole to melt faster. Historic ice sheets that had lasted hundreds, if not thousands of years, were threatened by man made global warming.
Since the ice in the Antarctic has been increasing for several years on the trot, the media have stopped reusing those tired old pictures and now keep supporting and backing those warmist anti-scientists who simply MUST prove their CAGW hypothesis and not allow it to be falsified by real evidence, therefore not only does ice loss = man made global warming, but now, so does increasing ice too and they will use any BS evidence to support that myth and the mainstream media will continue to wilfully mislead their audiences to keep peddling that myth and never ever tackle the failure of the “scientists” to stick to the scientific method.
AAAGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
That said, I hope that all those involved are rescued safely, and the scientists and media organisations represented on board are made to pay the full costs of the rescue and compensate the owner of the Russian vessel, if it is lost to the ice.
MarineTraffic is no longer reporting a current position of the Polar Star. Last position posted was hours ago. Hmmmm.
Australia Network News reports all have been rescued and are aboard the AA.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-02/rescue-helicopter-arrives-at-stranded-antarctic-ship/5182632?section=australianetworknews
Good observation; went back and looked at that full-screen and indeed is the case …
Bad things can happen on lift-off should one of those wheels have gotten ‘stuck’ on something while the wheels were being extracted from the mush/ice composition.
Doesn’t seem like that chopper was properly equipped for Arctic/antarctic conditions with regard to ‘running gear’ * …
.
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* In a carriage or wagon, running gear designates the wheels and axles in distinction from the body. per wiki/powertrain
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“Antarctic ship: Helicopter rescue operation successful
AFP – January 02, 2014 11:05PM
The ship’s 22 crew will remain on board until the ice breaks up and the Shokalskiy can sail on under her own steam. She is well provisioned and those on board have not been in any danger.”
So, if they’ve not been in any danger it wasn’t really a rescue, was it? Does this mean that the taxpayer won’t be on the hook for an evacuation that was carried out essentially for the tourists’ comfort?
and
Ah, but it is worse than you think!
The Antarctic continent is 14.0 million km^2. Antarctic sea ice varies with day-of-year of course, but expands from a low point of 3.5 Mkm^2 to a recent and continuous (record-setting!) high of 19.5 Mkm^2.
(Odd, isn’t it, that the other continents are actually measured and reported to their decimal place of their last sq km, but Antarctica is not only completely left off of Hansen’s NASA-GISS Mercator projection completely, but is simply “rounded off” to the nearest million sq km by everybody? – Regardless of inaccuracy and ignorances and ignoring senses – that solid Antarctic surface is 97% ice-covered by a permanent (non-melting!) continental ice cap. Which is in turn surrounded by 3.5 Mkm^2 of permanent ice shelves. 14.0 + 3.5 Mkm^2 = 17.5 Mkm^2 of permanent ice surfaces.
And, in turn, that 17.5 Mkm^2 permanent ice-covered surface is surrounded by 3 Mkm^2 of sea ice (at minimum) and up to 19.5 Mkm^2 of sea ice at maximum each year. (The NSIRDC assures me that they do NOT include ice shelves in their sea ice total for either Arctic or Antarctic. That 3.5 Mkm^2 of permanent ice shelf around Antarctica? That by itself is 50% larger than the entire area of Hansen’s Mercator-exaggerated Greenland’s 2.1 Mkm^2.)
Thus, the “real” Antarctic reflective surface is not 14 million km2, not 17.5 million km2, but is actually 14 + 3.5 + 19.5 = 37 million sq km2 ! This is an area that will cover the entire globe from the south pole to 60 degrees south latitude, or from the north pole past the bottom of Greenland’s southern tip, all the way through Canada, pass well south of Alaska, take half of Siberia and Russia, and all of Scandinavia. AND all of the oceans between, around, and above those land masses.
But is is still worse than you think!
90% of South America’s 17.8 Mkm^2 is south of the equator = 16.0 Mkm^2.
About 1/3 of of Africa’s 30.2 Mkm^2 is south of the equator = 10.0 Mkm^2
All of Australia, New Zealand’s 8.0 Mkm^2 is south of the equator = 8.0 Mkm^2
So, by itself, at sea ice maximum, Antarctica’s reflective surface is larger than ALL of the other land area in the southern hemisphere!
Bear in mind the Polar Star was 108 some nautical miles outside Sydney a few hours and the average reported distance AIS for receiver sites is more like 50 miles due to a variety of factors.
BTW, “AIS Source 65” (which reported the Polar Star’s last position) is sponsored by a ham, VK2GEL per his website: http://www.qrz.com/db/vk2gel
Part of the issue might be shading of the VHF antenna located on the yardarm above the wheelhouse by other antennas, or maybe the VHF AIS antenna is located lower on the wheelhouse and is now shaded by the yardarm structure.
Not everything is a “con spir acy”.
Know the systems involved, and the technology incorporated, otherwise, it’s back to ‘Cargo Cult Science’ for all of us …
.
Scute says:
January 2, 2014 at 4:59 am
Hmm…I wonder whether, when those clowns have left, the Russian captain will pipe up and tell us what really happened.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Good point, there has been a lot of commenters from Australia, New Zealand and the US here, but what is the Russian response to all this, it’s their crew and their ship at risk.
No doubt the “intrepid Science” will continue onboard, as the AA returns to Hobart on 8 Jan.
https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/voyage.cfm?season=1314
Stand by to be ill as these clowns are treated to a hero’s welcome in Australia. We can be sure the good doctor and his minions will close up ranks and construct a message supporting pre-ordained conclusions reached before departing Auckland.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a look at the deck log from the Shokalskiy?
Selected excerpts from the bios of our heroic cast:
Graeme Clark:
“Graeme conducted his PhD in Antarctica, where he spent two summers diving under sea-ice to study future impacts of climate change on marine invertebrate communities.”
Kerry-Jayne Wilson:
“Climate change and oil exploitation pose new threats to seabirds. Importantly, birds are easier to count than other animals and changes in their numbers reflect changes in the marine ecosystem.”
Emma Johnston:
“Emma investigates the ecology of human impacts in such diverse marine environments as Antarctica, the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney Harbour.”
Richard Jones:
“His research interests are wide and varied and currently include the use of lake sediments to study past variation in the Asian and Indian Monsoon, the impact of rapid climate change in Holocene Australasia.”
Leticia Lentini:
“Leticia Lentini is the Events and Branding Marketing Manager for Google Australia and New Zealand.”
Matt McGlone:
“His research speciality is palaeoecology and climate change.”
Jonathan Palmer:
“Jonathan will be leading the tree ring dating across the subantarctics.”
Sarah Richardson:
“Sarah will lead the terrestrial ecology programme, concentrating on the structure and function of New Zealand’s southernmost tree lines, and their potential response to warming climates.”
Janet Wilmhurst:
“documenting how they have responded to both natural and human disturbance and climate change over the last 10,000 years.”
Ezequiel Marzinelli:
“He is particularly interested in understanding the impacts of climatic change and other human disturbances on the ecological interactions and processes that shape these communities.”
Tracey Rogers:
“The common thread of Tracey’s rather diverse research is the attempt to understand how mammals respond to change specifically the recent warming in the Antarctic.”
Finally! After years of waiting for the “climate refugees” we have our first actual candidates with these “boat people”. Too bad they were actually fleeing cold and ice, but oh well.
Wilkus: So, by itself, at sea ice maximum, Antarctica’s reflective surface is larger than ALL of the other land area in the southern hemisphere!
Thanks Wilkus. That’s absolutely chilling.
Sorry, that last thanking was for RACookPE1978!