From YORK UNIVERSITY and the “paging Dr. Peter Wadhams” department…
![Northwest_passage[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/northwest_passage1.jpg?quality=83)
Prior to this research, there was little information about the thickness of sea ice in the NWP, which meanders through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Yet, next to ice coverage and type, sea ice thickness plays the most important role in assessing shipping hazards and predicting ice break-up.
“While everyone only looks at ice extent or area, because it is so easy to do with satellites, we study ice thickness, which is important to assess overall changes of ice volume, and helps to understand why and where the ice is most vulnerable to summer melt,” says lead researcher York Professor Christian Haas, the Canada Research Chair for Arctic Sea Ice Geophysics.
The research paper, “Ice Thickness in the Northwest Passage“, was published in the journalGeophysical Research Letters .
Haas and his team, including Stephen Howell of Environment Canada, measured first-year and multiyear ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago using an airplane equipped with an electromagnetic induction sounder or EM bird. They surveyed the ice in April and May of 2011 and again in 2015. It is considered the first large-scale assessment of ice thickness in the area.
The surveys found a modal thickness of 1.8 to two metres in most regions of the NWP and mean thickness of between two and three metres. Ice originating from the Arctic Ocean showed a mean thickness of more than three metres on average. Some multiyear ice regions contained much thicker, deformed ice that was more than 100 m wide and more than four metres thick.
“This is the first-ever such survey in the Northwest Passage, and we were surprised to find this much thick ice in the region in late winter, despite the fact that there is more and more open water in recent years during late summer,” says Haas. “This points to the importance of ice transport from the high Arctic and melt processes during the spring season, which critically depend on weather conditions and how they affect the melting of thick ice.”
Although the results were obtained in late winter when no ships travel the route, they will impact how ice break-up and summer ice conditions develop and are currently predicted, and help forecast the opening and navigability of the NWP during summer. It will also affect how sea ice hazards are assessed during the shipping season and provide baseline data going forward.
The NWP, comprised of a series of gulfs, straits, sounds and channels that connect the Beaufort Sea in the west with Baffin Bay in the east, is a much shorter route for moving goods between the Pacific and Atlantic regions than the Panama and Suez Canals. At the moment, this year’s annual summer minimum Arctic-wide ice coverage is the fourth lowest on record, with similar low coverage in the NWP, according to information provided by the Canadian Ice Service.
How climate change will affect the summer ice in the NWP in the future, however, is difficult to predict, says Haas. Further melting could cause more multiyear ice from the Arctic Ocean to drift into the NWP, making it less, not more passable.
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Abstract
Recently, the feasibility of commercial shipping in the ice-prone Northwest Passage (NWP) has attracted a lot of attention. However, very little ice thickness information actually exists. We present results of the first ever airborne electromagnetic ice thickness surveys over the NWP carried out in April and May 2011 and 2015 over first-year and multiyear ice. These show modal thicknesses between 1.8 and 2.0 m in all regions. Mean thicknesses over 3 m and thick, deformed ice were observed over some multiyear ice regimes shown to originate from the Arctic Ocean. Thick ice features more than 100 m wide and thicker than 4 m occurred frequently. Results indicate that even in today’s climate, ice conditions must still be considered severe. These results have important implications for the prediction of ice breakup and summer ice conditions, and the assessment of sea ice hazards during the summer shipping season.
Full paper here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL065704/full
Note: this article was updated shortly after publication to make the link to the paper active. The date on the Toronto byline was also edited to read 2015, not 2005, as it originally and erroneously appeared in the press release
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
Jump to Amundsen expedition – [edit]. Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to sail through the Northwest Passage in 1903–1906.
Overview – Routes – Extent – Historical expeditions
Robin W-
Maybe earlier-
North-west Passage.
Colonial Times (Hobart, Tas. : 1828 – 1857) Tuesday 15 October 1839 p 5 Article
… North-west Passage. From a number of the Penny Magazine, for April 1838 … , we gather the intelligence, that the north-west passage has been achieved,
The plan is to sail across the top, not through the Canadian or Russian waters.
Smart Rock: you rock! Great commentary, hope it gets lots of comments downthread.
“Denying alarmists” are going to have a cow
I can’t believe that right wingers in the US are as completely bonkers as this man. Apparently all the data on sea ice is just made up, and the discovery of flowing water on Mars is a left wing conspiracy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/29/rush-limbaugh-nasa-mars-water-leftist-agenda_n_8217610.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
Limbaugh is being sloppy and over-generalizing. But this is what happens when the public finds that critical data (in this case the surface temperature record) have been subject to manipulation. This isn’t just “bonkers right-wingers”; it’s called “fall-out” or “what did you expect would happen?”. After all, if you discover that you can’t trust the temperature record, why should you trust the curves for ice extent, or any other official govt figures?
Or reports from Mars on flowing water?
This year ice growth will be the fastest for many years. The fastest in Canada.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
It will lock the polar vortex in the stratosphere over the Bering Strait.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/10/03/0300Z/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-48.18,84.87,455
Antarctic Situation at 2015 September 28
Antarctic ozone today: Ozone depletion is now extensive and the ozone hole covers Antarctica. The ozone hole grew rapidly from mid August onwards and is near its largest at some 25 million square kilometres. This is a larger hole than the average of those over the last decade. The ozone distribution is that of mid spring with lowest and still decreasing ozone amounts across the continent, particularly the Atlantic sector, and higher (and increasing) values around the Southern Ocean. Ozone is declining by about 1% per day near the centre of the ozone hole. Values currently range from around 130 DU over West Antarctica to near 400 DU over parts of the Southern Ocean. These highest values are lower than at the same time last year. There are significant differences between the various satellite measurements. Temperatures in the lower part of the ozone layer are below the threshold for Polar Stratospheric Cloud (PSC) formation over much of Antarctica and the area with PSCs is larger than average, but is now decreasing. Through most of the ozone layer temperatures are below the long term average but are beginning to warm and in the higher parts of the ozone layer are above the PSC formation threshold. The polar vortex is near average in size at most levels except the highest and lowest, where it is significantly larger than average.
The 2015 ozone hole: Ozone hole levels were briefly reached over the Antarctic Peninsula on August 5 with significant depletion beginning in mid August. Depletion became more widespread by September, exceeding the mean for the last decade and greater than in the last couple of years. The polar vortex was the largest over the past decade in the upper part of the ozone layer from July to September and the area with PSCs was also larger than average during this period.
https://legacy.bas.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/index.html
What a bunch of hog wash rhetoric – If you go looking for thick ice you can find ice… if you go looking for a Northwest Passage navigation route you have seven (7) routes to select from… in 2015 ALL SEVEN NW PASSAGE ROUTES WERE OPEN. Gentlemen please stop regurgitating the media’s ice cube garbage… Please consider the following “major” voyages through the Northwest Passage – in 2014 NUNAVIK carried 23,000 tons of ore, in 2013 NORDIC ORION carried 73,000 tons of coal and in 2012 the 43,524 GT private cruise ship THE WORLD transit the Northwest Passage. There are many others transits… check the records. There have been more than thirty “small craft” (yachts) transit the NW Passage in the last three years. THAT THICK ICE DIDN’T STOP THOSE TINY FIBERGLASS YACHTS. BECAUSE THEY WERE LOOKING FOR A ROUTE OF NAVIGATION – NOT THICK SEA ICE. EVERY YEAR BOATS ARE TRANSITING THE NW PASSAGE – IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A NW PASSAGE VOYAGE ANYONE CAN – HIRE A VETERAN ICE PILOT NAVIGATOR AND THROW THE LINES. THE PROOF IS IN THE RECORDS – TAKE A LOOK HERE: http://www.americanpolar.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/NWP-2014-X-5-layout-for-PDF.pdf
Geeze!