It’s time to open another chapter in the continuing adventures of Northabout. The Polar Ocean Challenge team have been plagued by sea ice along their route across the Laptev Sea, but currently they are hurrying towards the exit into the East Siberian Sea via the Dmitry Laptev Strait:
The latest chart of sea ice in the East Siberian Sea from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute suggest they should now have plenty of (comparatively!) plain sailing ahead of them:
Certain quarters of the cryodenialosphere have been questioning the plucky little yacht’s ability to make it through the Northwest Passage before it freezes up once again in the Autumn. As a crude reality check on that assertion let’s see how previous successful single season polar circumnavigations fared in that regard. The international date line runs through the Bering Strait, and effectively defines a boundary between the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage. In 2010 Børge Ousland and Thorleif Thorleifsson in the catamaran Northern Passage crossed the date line on September 3rd:
Let’s wait and see when Northabout manages to pass that milestone, before heading to their next scheduled port of call at Barrow in Alaska.
[Edit – August 21st]
Northabout has spotted some more sea ice, this time in the Dmitry Laptev Strait. Presumably the small area shown in the AARI chart above? According to the latest “Ship’s Log”:
Well slowly making progress, and now into a new sea, East Siberian, Looks the same to be honest. Saw a ship,on the AIS , but couldn’t see it with the fog. Went between the Islands. We had a large patch of 8/10ths ice in the middle, but managed to keep north of it. Along the coast you could again see the remnants of an old Polar station. What a vast coast to look after.
Just as things were getting into a rhythm, the engine is over revving. We are so close but so far out here. My stomach is sometimes in my mouth, Comrades trying to work it out. If not, is a slow sail from here to Alaska.
The reported engine trouble doesn’t seem to have slowed Northabout down. She crossed 150 east earlier this morning and is now passing the delta of the Indigigirka River:
[Edit – August 22nd]
Her engine has been serviced, and Northabout continues to make good progress. She’s crossed 160 east, and is now passing the delta of the Kolyma River:
We’ve got enough wind to put the staysail out and the skies are clear. I think quite a lot of how I was feeling may have been that I hadn’t got any sunshine for over two weeks, the last couple of days however have been warm(ish) and bright. I at least am coming dangerously close to feeling actually happy, I don’t know about anyone else… Provided we continue like this we should be in Point Barrow in under a week.
[Edit – August 23rd]
Northabout looks to be turning south:
Presumably that is to skirt the patch of high concentration sea ice in their path, rather than try to break through the lower concentration area to the north (which is towards the bottom of this image!):
[Edit – August 25th]
Northabout is currently closing in on “the edge of the world” at 180 degrees east and/or west:
Her crew aren’t entirely happy with the speed at which that is happening at present though:
A long slog of a day. Very choppy seas which makes living onboard difficult, especially sleeping, when you can be fast asleep and suddenly wake up in mid air.
The wind we had was a head wind, so slow going. Getting to the edge of the World is proving tiresome.
Our track to get the best wind is towards the ice, and north east, hoping this will change during the night, and bring us back south to our waypoint.
A long slog in the Chukchi Sea. Its renown for its wild weather and seas. With rising winds now in the 25/30 knots, we have had a bumpy ride, but fast and in the right direction.
Well, well, we passed the date line and the W 168 58 .620 at 16.57 boat time, that is the point we can inform the Russian Authorities that we have finished their Northern Sea Route, and we no longer have to report to them daily. I will celebrate this milestone when we get to Point Barrow. It’s only just sinking in what we have all done.
Next stop Barrow, and after that Northabout takes on one of the Southern routes through the NorthWest Passage. It looks like she’ll have much more difficulty spotting some sea ice than on the first half of her polar circumnavigation!
According to the old saying “A change is as good as a rest”, so rather than plagiarise today’s title from a “skeptical” web site we’ve invented this one all by ourselves. Northabout is a small yacht with big ideas. (S)he wants to circumnavigate the North Pole in one summer season. However certain cryoblogospheric commenters are somewhat skeptical that this can be achieved this year. Take Tony Heller for example:
There has been very little melt going on in the Arctic Ocean the last few days, due to cold cloudy weather.
A group of climate clowns were planning on sailing around the entire Arctic Ocean through the Northeast and Northwest Passages (to prove there isn’t any ice in the Arctic) but are stuck in Murmansk because the Northeast Passage is completely blocked with ice.
The “group of climate clowns” aboard Northabout that Mr. Heller refers to are led by David Hempleman-Adams. According to the Polar Ocean Challenge web site:
David is one of the most experienced and successful adventurers in the world.
In his forty years as an adventurer, David was the first person to reach the highest peaks on all seven continents and journey fully to the North and South Geographical and Magnetic Poles. He has broken forty-seven Federation Aeronautique Internationale ballooning records
My name is Tony Heller. I am a whistle blower. I am an independent thinker who is considered a heretic by the orthodoxy on both sides of the climate debate.
I have degrees in Geology and Electrical Engineering, and worked on the design team of many of the world’s most complex designs, including some which likely power your PC or Mac. I have worked as a contract software developer on climate and weather models for the US government.
However despite Tony’s long list of qualifications he is evidently currently quite confused, since according to the Polar Ocean Challenge live tracking map David and Northabout are not in actual fact “stuck in Murmansk” at all:
This shouldn’t come as surprise to anyone with an internet connection and a desire to check the facts, since as we speak there is currently remarkably little sea ice cover on the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean:
Hence Northabout should find the next leg of his/her voyage across the Barents and Kara Seas pretty plain sailing. However Vilkitsky Strait, the passage from the Kara into the Laptev Sea, is currently looking a trifle tricky:
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the Vilkitsky Strait on July 20th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
Do you suppose Tony Heller suffers from precognitive dreams?
[Edit – July 22nd 2016]
According to Environment Canada this morning there’s a 988 hPa central pressure cyclone causing a bit of a blow in the Vilkitsky Strait at the moment:
Sea and air temperature getting colder as we venture further north. Saw quite a lot of Dolphins for the first time around the Yacht. Still sea gulls flying behind and skimming the waves.
Had some promising Canadian ice charts yesterday, but that’s a long way off. Today we should get an update with the Russian side. fingers crossed it is still not solid around the cape and Laptev sea. That could slow us down considerably. The wind has been blowing the pack ice against the land, so very difficult to get around the shore, but let’s see what Santa brings.
P.S. Maintaining his usual modus operandi, Tony Heller has penned a new article today, containing a satellite image remarkably similar to the one just above. Under the headline “The 2016 Franklin Expedition” he tells his loyal readership:
The Polar Ocean Challenge is headed off into the ice.
They will run into this in three days – hundreds of miles of solid ice. Without an icebreaker, they are going nowhere. I asked them on Twitter if they have an icebreaker. I haven’t received a response, and will be monitoring them by satellite to see if they are cheating.
By some strange coincidence we’re “monitoring them by satellite” too:
As for ice melt, yet another totalitarian propaganda expedition intended to “raise awareness” of climate “catastrophe” by trying to sail around the Arctic in the summer has just come a cropper owing to – er – too much ice. Neither the North-East Passage nor the North-West Passage is open, so the expedition is holed up in – of all ghastly places – Murmansk. That’ll teach Them.
However my corrective comment has yet to see the light of day at WUWT:
Meanwhile Northabout resolutely presses on regardless, and has just passed 74 degrees North:
whilst the sea ice edge in the north-eastern Kara Sea has retreated somewhat over the last three days:
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the Vilkitsky Strait on July 23rd 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
Here’s the July 20-22nd AARI map of the Vilkitsky Strait area:
On the topic of Arctic sea ice melt in general Viscount Monckton opines over on WUWT that:
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s graph, also available at WUWT’s sea-ice page, it’s possible, though not all that likely, that there will be no Arctic icecap for a week or two this summer:
Even if the ice disappears for a week or two so what? The same was quite possibly true in the 1920s and 1930s, which were warmer than today in the northern hemisphere, but there were no satellites to tell us about it.
The Good Lord seems to have a very tenuous grasp on reality, since the NSIDC’s graph shows nothing of the sort. Perhaps he is merely indulging in irony?
[Edit – July 24th 2016]
Northabout passed the 75 degrees North milestone overnight:
Clouds obscure the Vilkitsky Strait in visible light this morning but passive microwaves make it through the murk, albeit with reduced resolution. They reveal the sea ice edge in the Kara Sea receding and a narrow passage opening up along the Northern side of the Strait (North is down in the image):
NASA Worldview passive microwave image of the Vilkitsky Strait on July 24th 2016, derived from the AMSR2 instrument on the Shizuku satellite
According to Ben Edwards’ latest blog post from the Barents Sea:
I just wore a T-shirt on my first watch out of Murmansk. Today I wore my trawler suit and a primaloft under it with gloves and a hat….
As the cryodenialosphere continue to retweet and reblog their regurgitated rubbish here’s a picture from last year of Northabout amidst some ice, especially for those apparently unable to distinguish a small yacht from a large icebreaker:
Meanwhile Arctic sea ice continues its inexorable decline:
[Edit – July 24th 2016 PM]
Shock News! Tony Heller has just published yet another article about Northabout’s Great Adventure, and yours truly gets a mention. In the headline no less!! Read all about it at:
Meanwhile the commenters over at unReal Science keep blathering on about icebreakers even though one of the more inquisitive denizens posted thisextract from the “Ship’s Log” over there yesterday:
Partly checked the new ice charts on www.nsra.ru, we still have no chance of getting through yet, not past the cape or through the Laptev sea. Nikolai, Our Russian Captain who is very familiar with this route, impresses on me that this is a very unusual year and normally clear, Not what I want to hear. We are under sail, so saving fuel, and will find a small island to shelter until we get improvements. We are still 5 days from the ice, so lets hope for some southerly winds to push the ice from shore.
Northabout is heading for the Kara Sea past the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, and has now passed 76 degrees North:
[Edit – July 25th 2016]
The skies are still cloudy over the Vilkitsky Strait and Cape Chelyuskin, so here’s another AMSR2 passive microwave visualisation of the state of play. Note the change of scale:
NASA Worldview passive microwave image of the Vilkitsky Strait on July 25th 2016, derived from the AMSR2 instrument on the Shizuku satellite
The sea ice area in the Laptev Sea has finally started decreasing at a more “normal” rate for late July, but still has a lot of catching up to do compared to recent years:
Meanwhile over at “Watts Up With That” at least one reader of Christopher Monckton’s purple prose is clearly confused. Needless to say my clarifying comment is still invisible to him:
Finally, for the moment at least, here’s some moving pictures of dolphins having fun in the Barents Sea:
[Edit – July 26th 2016]
I was expecting Northabout to have entered the Kara Sea by now, but instead (s)he has headed north, and is now well above the 77th parallel:
It’s still pretty cloudy up there so here once again is the latest AMSR2 passive microwave visualisation of the Vilkitsky Strait area, with a few place names added for a bit of variety:
NASA Worldview passive microwave image of the Vilkitsky Strait on July 26th 2016, derived from the AMSR2 instrument on the Shizuku satellite
P.S. The Polar Ocean Challenge team explain via Twitter:
@GreatWhiteCon Ha ha! Thanks for interest! Waiting game, manoeuvring, strategy. Difficult to update in choppy conditions! New SHIPSLOG now
— PolarOceanChallenge (@PolarOceanChall) July 26, 2016
Choppy sea, taking four hour tacks. These sea conditions make it hard to sleep, cook or relax.
We are considering many elements all the time. We are due new Russian Ice charts today.
We know the North west is pretty clear, but this year is a very unusual year in the north east passage. Normally the Laptev Sea would be pretty open now as in previous years. It is not. This is also partly due to the wind blowing the pack ice down south and consolidating next to the land.
So, we need to get through the straight and through the Laptev Sea. So where do we wait until we can do this? We have deliberately taken our time to get to this point, and used the wind as much as we can to conserve fuel.
Now the weather has changed, the wind direction has also changed. From the calm turquoise seas, to choppy short seas, wet, windy and cold.
So we took a long tack north, and then tacked east again. There is No hurry. We will slowly make our way east, and if we can find an island with no fast ice around, will look for a sheltered spot, until we get better ice conditions.
The other options are to Heave to and wait, but this is a sailing Yacht, she needs to sail. And if we get a Southerly blow, it could change our chances very quickly to get around, so we need to be close to react.
So, another day at the office.
There was a report on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning from the crew of Northabout, and an interview with Dr. Ed Blockley from the UK Met Office about the current state of sea ice in the Arctic:
Note in particular the part at 2:59:00 where Justin Webb says to Ed:
I thought that I’d read somewhere that [Northabout] had got stuck.
I cannot help but wonder what on Earth gave him that idea?
[Edit – July 27th 2016]
After “going round in circles” north of Novaya Zemlya yesterday Northabout is now heading East across the Kara Sea:
Synthetic aperture radar images from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 1A satellite have started flowing through Polarview once again, so here’s one of where Northabout is heading:
Sentinel 1A synthetic aperture radar image of the Vilkitsky Strait on July 26th 2016
Here’s the current Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute map of the same area:
There’s still no way through by which Northabout might avoid an encounter with 9-10 tenths sea ice coverage. Then of course there’s the Laptev Sea to contend with too. Here’s the latest AMSR2 visualisation from the University of Hamburg:
It’s not exactly plain sailing there either just yet!
[Edit – July 28th 2016]
This morning Northabout has almost reached 79 degrees East, and appears to be heading in the direction of Ostrov Troynoy:
The clouds over the Laptev Sea have cleared somewhat as the recent cyclone heads for the Beaufort Sea, to reveal that the “brick wall” of ice referred to in certain quarters now looks more like Swiss cheese:
NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Laptev on July 28th 2016, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
Here’s a close up look at the Vilkitsky Strait from the Landsat 8 satellite this morning. Note that unlike the MODIS image above, north is at the top of this one:
Meanwhile according to SailWX the Russian icebreaker Yamal is traversing the Vilkitsky Strait from east to west:
I was idly scrolling through my Twitter feed this morning when I couldn’t help but notice that Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was calling for volunteers to research possible trends in The Economist’s attitude to “climate change” over recent decades:
Interesting media analysis topic for someone with more time than me! (4/4) @TheEconomist
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) January 30, 2015
Unable to resist temptation I immediately popped on over to The Economist online and searched for the term “Arctic”, as is my wont. Lo and behold I discovered much to my amazement that they had published an article on that very topic earlier on this very day. However after reading it I have to say I was less than impressed, and reported my findings back to @ClimateOfGavin. I also called The Economist’s “Editorial” number, and spoke to a nice lady with an American accent who told me that she was an “answering service” and assured me that she would pass on my message to an Economist editor, but they almost certainly wouldn’t look at it until Monday. Here’s how the conversation is going:
Them:
The Northern Sea Route is not living up to the hype, either. In 2013 71 ships traversed Russia’s Arctic, according to the Northern Sea Route Information Office: a large increase since 2010, when the number was just four. But 16,000 ships passed through the Suez Canal in 2013, so the northern route is not starting to compete. In 2014 traffic fell to 53 ships, only four of which sailed from Asia and docked in Europe (the rest went from one Russian port to another). The route does not yet link Europe and East Asia.
The decline in 2014 was partly caused by the weather: less sea ice melted last summer than in 2013, so the route was more dangerous.
Now I distinctly recall posting this image:
on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum on August 23rd last year. Over and above that, here’s a couple of freshly minted videos to illustrate the point more vividly. The AMSR2 Arctic sea ice concentration data displayed is courtesy of the University of Hamburg:
[Edit 02/02/15] The Economist’s “man in Tromso” asked to see 2012 as well, so here it is. AMSR2 data wasn’t available in 2012, so this one uses the SSMIS passive microwave radiometer instead:
Set the top two running in sync and then if the difference between 2013 and 2014 isn’t as plain as day to you, my name is Snow White!
[Edit 05/02/15]
In an endeavour to quantify the reduction in ice coverage in 2014 compared to 2013 that’s evident in the animations we’ve combined the regional extents for the Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev and Kara Seas to produce this chart:
[/Edit]
Hence:
Us:
Please forgive my rather brusque manner, but I arrive fresh from hauling the Mail on Sunday in front of IPSO.
Can The Economist provide some evidence for their rather vague assertion that “less [Arctic] sea ice melted last summer than in 2013”. Can you for example provide a link to an authoritative source?
The latest print edition of The Economist landed on my doormat this morning. I eagerly turned to the “Letters” section, but was disappointed to discover that my virtual “Letter to the editor” sent on Thursday morning must have missed their deadline. Here it is:
CC: Your “Tromso correspondent”
Sir(s),
I read with much interest the “Not so cool” article in your January 31st edition, which suggested “The hype over the Arctic recedes, along with the summer ice”.
I take the point your Tromso correspondent makes that “The Northern Sea Route is not living up to the hype, either”, but I must take issue with the hype that currently reads, in both your print and online editions:
“The decline in 2014 was partly caused by the weather: less sea ice melted last summer than in 2013, so the route was more dangerous.”
All the evidence I have seen (collected together for your edification, including maps, graphs and animations, at https://greatWhiteCon.info/2015/01/is-the-economist-being-economical-with-the-truth-about-arctic-sea-ice/) refutes that statement. The minimum Arctic sea ice area and extent in summer 2014 were both below 2013. According to assorted satellites there was significantly less sea ice bobbing about along the Northern Sea Route in 2014 than in 2013. The official August 2014 forecast published by the Northern Sea Route Information Office maintained that ice conditions would be “Easy” over the entire NSR.
I look forward to seeing this particular piece of “hype” receding in both physical and virtual print in the very near future.
Our headline for today is only partially plagiarised from today’s “Arctic Shipping Update” article on “Steven Goddard’s” (un)Real Science blog. This morning Tony Heller posted the following ACNFS Arctic sea ice concentration visualisation:
Them:
Climate experts say that Northeast and Northwest Passages are open for business, but neither will open up this year.
One of them is the Hapag-Lloyd cruise ship MS Hanseatic, which is currently wending its way through the New Siberian Islands:
The Hanseatic also carries a webcam. Here’s what it reveals at the moment:
It’s currently pretty plain sailing on that section of the Northern Sea Route by the look of things!
Us:
By the morning of Sunday August 24th (UTC) my dissenting comment had been released from limbo, although it had remained there the previous evening. Them:
Somebody is telling a story aren’t they? Perhaps you’d like to tell us where the ship is. On the one hand I see a ship with the name Silver Explorer stuck in the ice, and then on the other I see your picture with green ice free waters. Everybody is going to be looking for this vessel now. Anybody with a satellite phone? Maybe they will wait it out till the ice thaws, like they did at the other pole. I will be saving that pretty picture of green, just in case you told us so.
Us:
Are you aware of the difference between the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route, which is sometimes referred to as “the Northeast Passage”? That “pretty picture of green” is of the latter. Here’s the current position of the cruise ship MS Hanseatic in the Laptev Sea, coloured green on the map above:
Regular readers will have realised by now that we’ve been pestering the Mail and The Telegraph with telephone calls and emails for weeks now. That’s because, as The Economist put it last weekend:
There are climate facts—and facts are stubborn things.
Both The Mail and The Telegraph have now corrected a couple of the gross inaccuracies they printed (virtually and/or physically) on September 8th, but many more remain. One of those is the identical phrase in both articles saying:
An unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.
The fact of the matter is that this statement is untrue. I’ve recently received a couple of letters about this from “The Daily Telegraph” signed by “Robert Winnett, Head of News”. Here’s an extract from the first one:
Them:
Reputable evidence exists to show an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shore. This can be seen on the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s website [in the article] “A Real Hole Near the North Pole“. The site states that the average ice extent for August 2013 was 6.09 million square kilometres, which is more than half the size of Europe.
Us:
Have I got news for you Robert! If you’d read any of the articles on here, or watched any of the videos I linked to in my emails, that wasn’t the “fact” I was quibbling about. The fact is that the Arctic “ice sheet” was not “unbroken” and did not “stretch… to Russia’s northern shore” on September 8th 2013 and for considerable periods of time both before and after that date. Here’s an extract from The Telegraph’s second letter:
Them:
In reply to your enquiry, the Telegraph’s policy is to correct clear inaccuracies once we are alerted to them – and in appropriate cases update articles on our website.
Us:
I thought I’d already made this perfectly plain, but evidently not, so here’s yet another alert about clear inaccuracies in the “reporting” of climate science in The Telegraph:
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