Some prayers might be in order for four young men who are attempting the Northwest Passage in a rowboat. They haven't reported since yesterday.
Theirs is just the sort of stunt I would have pulled when young. You are sitting around, contemplating how boring it would be to work a real job in the summer, and then someone comes up with the idea to make some sort of social statement, and avoid working a real job. Usually such ideas never come to fruition, but some youth actually carry out the dream.
In the dream it is sunny, pleasantly cool, and gulls wheel and cry in the arctic sky, as whales and seals cross blue waves dotted with a few, but not too many, icebergs.
In reality a particularly nasty summer storm has blown up and persisted for days, the sky and water are always grey, and the young men are running into bad sea ice. While the storm is finally weakening, the temperatures remain around freezing.
The young men have no engine, and must depend on their sheer strength and stamina at the oars to get themselves out of jams. They recently lost their anchor.
It's amazing people these days can be so in contact, even when actually far from help.
JULY 31 UPDATE: They still appear to be hunkered down on a small island that doesn't appear on all maps, awaiting better weather conditions.
"It looks like the gap in their GPS record covers a time period between 7:57 PM and 8:51 AM. Thirteen hours. There are also earlier gaps in the record.
I wonder if GPS is a gadget they need to activate, perhaps hitting a button to see where they are. If one member of the crew is really compulsive about their progress, and the rest less interested in the minute by minute details, you could get a watch on deck with a lot of reports followed by watches with few or none.
He is worried the arctic will be changed, when his daughters get up their to see his time capsule. Actually he should be worried that his daughters will have changed before he gets back. Kids grow up too fast, and every moment you spend with them is more valuable than you dream. Fortunately he likely can chat over the web.
He guesses the site is a "Dorset Site." The Doset culture lived in the warmth of the Medieval Warm Period, and was stressed out by the same Little Ice Age that stressed out the Vikings. The Inuit were better adapted.
There are some sites of stone that are long and thin, just about the right size to be roofed by a Viking ship dragged out of the water. The round sites may be Dorset, but they also can be from the "Independence I Culture," who were the first people to explore the arctic (that we know of) after the Ice Age. It was much warmer, and the Arctic Ocean likely was ice-free, and higher due to more ice-melt of mountain glaciers and Greenland's Ice cap. Geologists can see the wave-made beaches created by these higher seas, (which are quite different from the beaches made by grinding chunks of ice,) and in the sand and cobbles find bits of driftwood that come from trees all the way across the arctic ocean. However there is far less driftwood than you would expect to find, and one reason there is much less driftwood is because the Independance I Culture apparently burned it for fuel, as well as building parts of their homes of it. (Even though it was warmer, the winter nights were just as sunless.) In any case, when they first arrived in the arctic the shores may well have been heaped with hundreds of years of driftwood, but they burned it all up over a couple hundred years. Then it got colder and they likely headed south.
In any case, the not-so-young man "Kevin" ought not worry about the arctic changing. It already has changed, and will change again. If one must fret, there are better things to worry about.
UPDATE AUGUST 4—They got out of the last trouble, and made it to Paulatuk. However they did not do the wise thing, which would be to be airlifted out, and instead headed back out again. So of course people who care are worried again, and praying again. I noted seven "hits" on this old post in the time since they left. So I figured I should update and simply state I know no more than is shown on their GPS map, which can be seen at http://mainstreamlastfirst.com/ . We shall have to wait to see why they chose the meandering route the GPS shows. It is sheer speculation to say anything about sandbars or headwinds or ice floes.
I don't think they should expect milder weather. They may get lucky, but this has not been a benign summer, as arctic summers go. It has been colder than normal, overall, and also the weather tends to get colder in August. The midnight sun still is up, but too low, and people who have served in the military up there describe how water containers start freezing over in August, despite the endless daylight.
They are tough, but need to face facts at some point. They are tough, but not as tough as tough luck can be up there. I'm not talking about the tough luck of chosing a cold summer to try to make a political point about Global Warming, either. At some point politics don't matter, sponsors don't matter, all that matters is those you love and getting out alive.
In any case, I don't think they were wise to head back out, but neither was I, when I was their age. I wish them luck, though I don't think they will prove much, in terms of politics, if they make progress. What they are proving now is more in terms of mule-headed, male prowess. May the Good Lord watch over them as He watched over me, 42 years ago, when I was young, over my head, and far out to sea.
AUGUST 6 PM UPDATE—I see 12 hits on this site today, so I guess I should post an update, although I am no authority. Their GPS shows them making decent progress along the coast, hugging the coast (which seems wise.) No Facebook posts.
Below (if it works) is a map with how far they have come in red and how far they have to go in blue.
AUGUST 8 MORNING UPDATE—It looks like they are serious about making progress, but may have stopped for a breather. Last GPS position was at around 11:00 PM, after making some serious headway, rowing east southeast, hugging the coast. They are on the south side of a high pressure, and back at Palatuk temperatures are in the 60's with a light east 6 mph wind, which would be a wind they'd have to row against. The big arctic storm is on the other side of the high pressure and not effecting them at the moment.
Temperatures should remain mild through the weekend. They'd best get going while the going is good.
AUGUST 13—Decent progress, but not yet halfway.
The best information is from their own site at http://mainstreamlastfirst.com/ When they are moving they seem too busy to post, but later a southerly gale forced them to pause gave them time to post some updates.
As a layman, just looking at the above map, I'd say New England will be all abuzz about a hurricane next weekend. Just look at that feature north of Puerto Rico. It is the ghost of Dorian, and it sure looks like it has a tropical swirl to me. Second, look at that nice, refreshing Canadian high pressure area, pushing the front off our coast. By the weekend it will have passed over us and will be blending into the Bermuda High off our coast, and perhaps strengthening that high, which would then keep Dorian from curving out to sea. Whether or not Dorian swerved inland would depend on the trough following the high, a feature that doesn't really even exist yet.
DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD.
So there you have it, even when the Nam Computer Model sticks a storm off Florida he barely bats an eye.
Me? I am batting an eye. But maybe I'm just scared of ghosts.
UPDATE 2 JULY 30 11:00 — Did that pretty looking swirl of clouds get crushed, or what? It looks like I was scared of ghosts.
AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD ACROSS THE BAHAMAS.
At this point the qualified meteorologists look good, while I, the old geezer stroking his jaw while looking at the sky, look like a dope. Score one point for science and zero for intuition.
Not that I'm not sensing something or another that will become apparent by the weekend, but in the short term it can be definitely stated that I was wrong. Is that such a bad thing?
There are all too many people these days who like to mock and scorn forecasters, without ever daring make a forecast themselves. If they dared do it, they'd see how good the guys they laugh at actually are.
Well, if that insignifigant smudge of cloud fades away, and there is nothing off Florida this weekend, tune back here and you will see me say, "I was wrong." I doubt I'll drop dead or turn into a frog, or any such dire thing. In fact I'll likely stand stronger.
For pride comes before the fall, and it is better to stand corrected than to fall unimproved.
DORIAN WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 31.7 NORTH...LONGITUDE 77.6 WEST.
THE ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 1013 MB...29.91 INCHES.
However, as there is still another day until the weekend is over, I don't have to admit defeat until tomorrow, and I might get lucky and break a leg before then.
Sunday, August 4— I was wrong.
I registered at the above site so I could make a comment, but it wan't printed. I'm not sure why. You would think they would at least explain why they snipped your comment. All I did was explain that melt-water pools are not all that uncommon, up where days are 24 hours long and the average temperature is above freezing from late May to early August.
The view from Camera 1, taken in the other direction, must have been taken twelve hours earlier or after, as the sun has circled all the way around on the horizon. You can see a few melt-water pools in the distance.
All in all, the ice still looks pretty solid. It can get pretty slushy up there, this late in the year, and I expect to see that happening during the next 30 days.
If you click the image to enlarge it, you can see what may be a crack from the lower right of the picture, in a straight line to behind the buoy. Perhaps a lead could open right beside the camera, which would be a North Pole Camera first. It also likely would shorten the lifetime of the camera. If the lead widenened, salt spray and choppy waves would effect the camera, and perhaps crumble the edge of the floe and drop the camera into the brine. On the other hand, if the sides of the lead clapped together again, the camera could be engulfed in a jumble of ice chunks as a pressure ridge formed. In either case, maybe we could hope for a few spectacular pictures, before the end.
But then what am I going to do with my spare time, if I can't sit around and watch ice melt?
A very nice picture from camera 2 this morning.
Lunchtime picture from Camera 2; snow squall coming?
Here's the latest picture. Nothing much has changed, but temperatures have dipped below freezing. It looks like they might be getting some freezing fog.
While nothing much has happened up by camera 2, since the water drained away, my little website has enjoyed a flood of visitors. Usually I get ten or twenty visitors a day, however (for the second time in a week,) I've had over three hundred. Obviously I should skip other subjects, for watching ice melt is the way to become famous.
167 viewers came over from "Watts Up With That." 89 viewers came from Steve Goddard's site "Real Science." 47 came from the Huffington Post. A few more came from Accuweather via Facebook. Add in a few others, and a total of 337 people had read this post (or at least looked at the first two pictures) by 9:09 on this Monday evening.
I am not used to having so many join me, as I watch ice melt, but I hope you have enjoyed the experience, and thank you for coming.
Now, when there is not much to see on Camera 2, the practiced ice-melt-watcher can either sit back and enjoy the serenity, or he can sake his thirst for wild excitement by delving into other data, regarding Camera two. How soon can we hope to see the typical melting resume? Where's the slush? And that is where it gets a bit interesting, this year.
What you see is that Camera 2 (The green line) got hesitant about crossing the 86-degrees-north line, and even retreated slightly back to the north. After it got over this hesitation, it progressed nicely south past 85-degrees-north, but now has become hesitant all over again, again retreating slightly north.
We are not talking huge distances here, but on July 24 the buoy had gotten down to 84.736 degrees, and yesterday it was at 84.848 degrees, north of where it had been. Today it has resumed its southerly drift, and is down to 84.808 degrees, but it will have to hurry to get as far south as was a week ago, tomorrow.
While it is true the buoy has drifted 300 miles from the Pole, I don't like it dawdling the way it does. How am I to see ice melt if it fritters away the summer like this? The summer is short in the arctic, and if the buoy doesn't get its rear in gear there's a chance it won't get to Fram Strait in time, and will get locked up in the winter freeze.
This brings me to another interesting thing that happened yesterday. Temperatures dropped below freezing, and have now been below freezing by the buoy for 27 hours. How am I to watch ice melt if it is below freezing?
Even more interesting is that for at least twelve hours today temperatures were below minus 1.7 degrees (C), bottoming out at minus 2.7 degrees (C). At these temperatures it is not just the relatively fresh water on top of the ice that refreezes, but also the salt water of the sea beneath that freezes.
Even though the change in the weather has popped temperatures back up to minus 0.5 (C) I have a sense things are colder than expected, up there. I'm not yet willing to say this is more than a blip in the averages, however I'm starting to look at my calender, for we are running out of time before the Big Refreeze typically starts.
Did you ever think that watching ice melt could involve so much suspense?!
CORRECTION: If you look at the small print at the top of the of the above pictures you will notice they were taken roughly an hour apart. For the sun to be in the same part of the sky, they must be pointed in the same direction. I incorrectly stated earlier they were pointed in opposite directions. In fact they are located around 900 feet ("three football fields") apart. "Lake North Pole" was only 100-200 feet wide, which is why it only appeared in the view of Camera 2.
Gorgeous day up there, 350 miles south of the pole. There were drops on the lens earlier that have dried up. The camera has resumed its southward drift. Still awaiting temperatures, but yesterday the temperature rose above freezing, up to 1.2 (C) before dropping back down to 0.2. Oddly, when the sun is this low on the horizon, clear weather and sunshine doesn't always make it warmer.
Our camera is located towards the upper right corner of this picture. Please notice our pressure ridge no longer looks like a mountain. In fact, you can't even see it, or any of the other pressure ridges in the ice. I think this may represent a problem. The good men striving to make sense of the arctic look at this picture and see chips of ice, and areas of open water, but not the considerable volume of ice all crunched together to form a narrow and somewhat invisible pressure ridge.
The satellite view shows us the arctic is not a solid sheet. It is made of plates, chips, and crumbs of ice, all colliding and clinking like ice cubes in a giant, swirling glass of ginger ale. However, unlike ice cubes, they don't just bump together. The size of what looks like little chips in the satellite view is actually enormous, and when they so much as nudge it is like a northbound freight train meeting a southbound freight train.
Look back at the shadowed pressure ridge in the right distance of the most recent picture from camera 2. How tall would you guess it is? It's smaller than it looks, but I'd say it is a big ridge, maybe fifteen feet tall. Because it is an iceberg, and because nine-tenths of an iceberg is under water, that means there is an unseen 135 feet sticking down.
In other words, all the chips of ice seen from outer space are not created equal. If the Arctic is flushing as it did in 2007, all the so-called "baby ice" remains thin chips, as it is flushed down past Fram Strait. (By "thin," I mean three to nine feet thick.) However, if there are winter storms, and a summer pattern that plugs Fram Strait, and these "chips" are not flushed out, then the so-called "baby-ice" starts to include pressure ridges. No longer is it only 3-9 feet thick, and instead can be over a hundred feet thick in places where the bergs include pressure ridges.
In conclusion, what we may be seeing is the process wherein "baby-ice" becomes "old ice," right before our eyes.
I hasten to add this is only a theory. However if this theory is correct the ice is very sneaky, because from outer space the plates, chips and crumbs of ice look the same, but in fact they are like the 98-pound-weakling who has been secretly lifting weights: They have muscles that are not apparent, and if we, (as the "bully" in this analogy,) try to treat the weakling as we once did, (kicking sand in its face,) we may get thrashed.
In any case, it is very interesting, watching the ice melt this summer, even if the danged stuff won't get around to properly melting. Even though temperatures warmed to 1.2 (C) above freezing by camera 2 today, they then turned right around and sank to 1.2 (C) below. They then crept up to 0.5 above, but are now sinking.
AUG 3 AFTERNOON — I'm just back from a trip out of town, and can't say it looks any warmer up there.
I just checked the temperatures at camera 2, and they are currently just below freezing. For the last week they have spent more time below freezing than above. Remember, this is 350 miles south of the pole.
The camera has resumed its southerly movement, sinking from 84.703 degrees north when I last posted to 84.626 north. The ice is not being helped by the wind, which has been from the southeast, south and now southwest for nearly two days. In essence the ice is moving into a headwind, and I'd expect it to be slowed down and even shoved north again, if these winds keep up. Also the southwest winds are off Greenland's cold icecap, which may explain the fact temperatures have remained below freezing for over a day and a half, and even hit minus 3 (C), which is below the freezing point of salt water. At last report they are still at minus 2.4 (C) so I'm not expecting any melt-water.
UPDATE AUG 5—MORNING—TWO PICTURES; THIS YEAR AND LAST YEAR.
It looked a lot slushier last year, with more melt-water pools. However if you squint at the horizon of this year's picture, you notice a dark line beyond the peaks of the distant pressure ridge. There may be a lead (open water) forming out there. Hopefully the sun will pop out over in that direction, and we'll get a chance to see if that dark area shines like open water.
The sun popped out just for a while, before a gray overcast returned: MORE THOUGHTS ON VOLUME—One thing I noticed while comparing the pictures of this year and last year, yesterday, was that this year's picture has more pressure ridges. I assume this suggests that the same area of ice has a greater volume. because in places it is thicker.
Much of what I notice cannot be called "scientific," because I'm just using my eyes, but I don't feel my lack of science should cause me to be discredited. After all, who would you rather have playing in the outfield in a baseball game: A non-scientific guy who just uses his eyes, and sprints to where the ball flies, and catches it, or a scientist who uses a slide-rule or computer keyboard, and is so busy calculating that the ball bounces off his head? However it would be nice to have a few numbers at my finger-tips, just so I could look a little bit scientific, even if I'm not.
One thing I've been paying attention to is the drift of the ice. It is generally south towards Fram Strait, but this year it keeps pausing and backing up. Try this on the south-bound lane of a freeway, and I bet you'll gather scientific evidence of a pile up. That is what a pressure ridge is, in my eyes. A pile up.
Recently the ice sped up and for six hours and was moving along at a 0.2 miles per hour. How did I figure that out?
By looking at the data at http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/PAWS819920_atmos_recent.html I can see that between 1200z on August 4 and 300z on August 5 the camera was moving south at a hundreth of a degee latitude every three hours. If you devide that 0.6 by three, you get 0.2 miles per hour. However then it slowed, and the last available data (yesterday's) shows it is only moving three thousandth of a degree ever three hours, or a thousandth of a degree per hour, or 0.06 miles per hour.
Ice chunks tend to tailgate on the ice highway, and because they do not allow for a proper braking distance, when one brakes then up the highway there has to be some sort of pile up.
Longitude is a real pain, especially up near the pole. For example, if you are standing a stride from the pole, a single stride to the side will cover 90 degrees longitude, but if you are standing two strides from the pole, the exact same stride will cover only 30 degrees. Therefore I'm not even going to try to give measurements in miles. However I feel it is noteworthy that the ice at Camera Two was moving west, came to a screaming halt, and now is heading east. This business of changing lanes without the proper use of turn-signals has got to cause pile ups to either side, on the Ice Highway to Fram Strait.
Besides the figures we have for Camera Two, we have another Buoy located roughly 79 miles to the north northeast, called "PAWS Buoy ID 975420." Located on a separate plate of ice, it represents another vehicle on the ice highway, and it is interesting to compare its smashing and crashing with the smashing and crashing of Camera Two.
Ignoring the sideways lane-changing of longitude for the moment, it can be seen that both slammed on the breaks and went in reverse between 600z on August 1 and 1200z on August 2. However Camera Two backed up .052 degrees of latitude, while the northern bouy only backed up .039 degrees. In terms of latidude, the distance between the two narrowed by .013 degrees. I make that to be .78 miles.
Now, if we were dealing with latitude alone, you would have a situation where, on the ice highway, PAWS Buoy ID 975420 blared his horn, swore like a Boston driver, there was a crash, and he had a tremendous rumple in the hood of his car. You take .78 miles of ice and crunch it into a pressure ridge, and that is one heck of a pressure ridge.
I am aware we have maps that portray the thickness of arctic ice, such as the Navy map at, http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictnowcast.gif however the problem with such maps is that a pressure ridge is too thin to show up. It would be thinner than a hair on such a map. In fact it would be as thin as the flagellum of a bacteria, and the map would require one heck of a zoom feature to even see the darn thing.
Therefore I just use my eyes, and notice the pressure ridges seen from Camera 2, that were not so common last year.
Before I close, I would like to gloat about something just a bit. You see, last spring I faced some friendly derision for predicting the sea ice extent would only get down to six million square kilometers. I claim to have used no science, and only to have used my eyes. Now, (perhaps only for a brief time,) there seems to be a small chance I could actually be right.
If, against all odds, I turn out to be right, I will be like the outfielder who caught the ball. Some scientists, far better at math than I, will be rubbing their heads because they didn't use their eyes.
A warm morning, with our shot of cool weather replaced by a warm southerly flow ahead of the next front. This flow always makes me look south, and a small low with a hook showing on radar off Cape Hatteras makes my brow quirk.
However that blob of clouds in the lower right of the map catches my eye most. That is the ghost of Dorian, and I doubt she is truly dead and done.
After the long heat wave, it is deliciously cool at daybreak. A thrush is singing in the pure blue of the dawn dusk, and the day should be dry, partly cloudy and brisk. There is absolutely no reason to fret and frown, but I'll manage, just a bit, due to the lore of the weather-wise Yankee kicking about in the back of my mind.
In the winter a brilliant blue sky is sometimes described as a "weather maker," due to the fact it can often be followed by a storm. Likely this is because the high pressure must be strong, to drive all clouds from the sky, and extremes breed extremes. A wishy-washy sky leads to wishy-washy weather.
In the summer, especially towards the end, a refreshing breeze from the northwest often makes me glance south for trouble. It is counter-intuitive to think a high could attract a hurricane, however if you look at the maps of the situation just before Carol bicected New England in 1954 you see a nice "protective" high pressure that you'd think would surely protect New England, even 36 hours before the storm hit.
Glancing at the map we see just such a high pressure shoving a cold front off the east coast.
However, when you look for hurricanes, the closest tropical worry is Dorian, closer to Africa than us, and not likely to be worth worry until the weekend has passed.
However do not despair. If you look back at the cold front moving off the coast, you can see a low developing on it. With the waters off the east coast so warm, you can fret about a nor'easter, especially if you are vacationing off Cape Cod.
On the other hand, you can not worry and be happy, and practice whistling down the road. I plan to at least give it a try.