The Northwest Passage is open for business
The ESA reports that satellite synthetic aperture radar shows the Northwest Passage is open for business (link for HiRes image)
"The most direct route of the Northwest Passage (highlighted in the top mosaic by an orange line) across northern Canada is shown fully navigable, while the Northeast Passage (blue line) along the Siberian coast remains only partially blocked. To date, the Northwest Passage has been predicted to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multi-year ice pack – sea ice that survives one or more summers. However, according to Pedersen, this year’s extreme event has shown the passage may well open sooner than expected."
Hmm. Looks like Northeast Passage may not have been such a wild guess.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
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11 comments:
How long until it won't matter, until you can just sail straight over the top rather than go NW or NE?
Sweetness - the opening of the NW passage would be very positive for trade.
Lubos has a post about the opening of the NW passage:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/northwest-passage-becomes-navigable.html
More: the BBC reported the Northwest Passage also opened in 2000.
http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2007/09/compare-and-contrast.html
Did Jim Hansen cut that black hole in the middle of the arctic ice?
It looks too perfectly round to be natural.
The yellow line passes the north coast of Banks Island. I doubt that the passage through there has been possible at any time this season. The was, however, a complete opening of the passage to the island's south. The problem with that is that to get from there to Baffin Bay by the most direct route, one must negotiate other passages that are either very narrow (and subject to hazardous tidal action, with many past violent groundings and sinkings), or, subject to rapidly changing ice conditions. For what it's worth, if a ship had been waiting at the south Banks passage right at the initial melt back, and picked the coast route to go the first half of the remaining distance to Baffin Bay, the, cut north up the Resolute, then on to the SE, and was very luck with timing, they would have indeed made it through this year.
We know you won't be happy until the ice is altogether gone, Steve. Relax, it looks like it won't take that long.
Anon 3:36 - while you may operated based on feelings, and believe everyone else does, some of us operate based on science and facts.
Sorry, that was Anon 3:46 PM ....
some of us operate based on science and facts
Ah. That would explain your weird anti-enviro digressions and non-sequiturs at RP Sr and your odd refusal to edit the fantastic journal that will come out of CA: Galileo: the Journal of CA NewScience.
Best,
D
That's funny Steve, are those the same kind of facts than the Siberian rivers dams?
OK, Let's talk facts: the German ice-breaker Polarstern, studying sea-ice this summer (not from space obviously), noted an average thickness of about 1 meter, half of what it was in 2001; 150 km from the pole, that same ship experienced an entire day of rain. Scientists on board the Russian ice-breaker Fedorov unsuccessfully searched for a piece of ice big enough to use as a floating base for a team of 25 and its equipment. They had to give up on that plan and use a islet off Severnaya Zemlia instead. The sailship Tara, intentionally ice-bound for study, has experienced drifting twice as fast as predicted and intermittent rain most of the month of august, about 400 km from the pole. As we already know, the rest of the facts numbers in million of square km.
There was nothing emotional in my statement. Large amounts of data indicate that the summer sea-ice is likely to disappear well within our lifetimes. Your comments, and those of others at CA, attempt to belittle this year sea-ice loss by quibbling on the Northwest Passage, which is deeply irrelevant at this point. Just like suggesting that the 27% Arctic loss is compensated by the 1.4% Antarctic gain.
However, this seems to indicate that you may not be satisfied with any ice loss to be considered significant unless it is beyond the staggering amount seen this year. It's not much of a stretch to say that will amount to ice free summer.
Anon 9:52
I think Steve Sadlov is just a little upset that some of the people at climate Audit (eg, Steven Mosher) are siding with John V rather than him
His world is crumbling around him.
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