Its a good time to go sailing in the arctic

[HenryC]

Arctic sea ice is the lowest it has been in the 33 years that satellites have been monitoring the ice at the N pole.
Its probably lower than its been in human history, although we obviously don't have satellite data to prove that.  At any rate, you can convince yourself by checking out these websites, they have satellite pictures, graphs, raw data, articles, you name it.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/index.htm             (Japanese Space Agency)
http://nsidc.org/                                                     (US National Snow and Ice Datacenter)

Allow me to summarize.  The area covered by sea ice goes up and down with the seasons, higher in winter, lower in summer, as you might expect.  In winter,  when the sun is below the horizon for months at a time, the polar sea freezes over, but in summer, some of it melts.  The summer sea ice is a good barometer of global climate, the winter ice cover is about the same year after year.  The lowest sea ice is about the middle of September, when the temperature in the arctic maxes out and slowly starts to drop as the sun heads south for the winter.  So by keeping records of how much sea ice is on the water in summer, you have a good idea of what the global weather is up to.

September sea ice has been dropping since the satellite was launched in 1979.  And the drop has not been something that only computers can detect and keep track of.  The sea ice at the N pole is melting away dramatically, at an enormous rate.

The average mid-September ice cover in the 1980s was about 7.5 million square kilometers.  In the 1990s, about 7 million square kilometers.  In the first decade of this century, the average mid-September ice coverage was about 5.5 million km sq.  It feeds on itself.

The trend continues, and it is accelerating.  Check out this graph:

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

This year's sea ice low beat the all time low-ice record set in 2007 of 4.2 million km sq on 24 Aug of this year.  The records have been broken repeatedly in the last few years, the process is speeding up. It hit bottom at 3.5 million km sq just a few days ago (16 Sep) and now seems to be heading back up as the fall progresses, although today, it is still well below the 24 August record..  Summer sea ice is about 40% lower now than it was when we started keeping accurate records only 30-odd years ago.  And its not a fluke.  The trend is steady and clear.  The arctic will be ice-free in summer, if not in our lifetime, then in the lifetimes of our children.  The polar regions act as thermal shock absorbers, using the winds and ocean currents to extract excess heat from the equatorial regions.  Any change there will affect the entire global climate. There is no getting away from this.

Why is it speeding up? As the springtime melt starts, the sunlight is reflected back into space by the white icecap. But as ice melts, the sunlight is absorbed by the dark sea, heating up the water, so the ice melts from both above and below.  When summer is over, the sun goes down for the long polar night, and the water starts to freeze again.  But if enough sunlight was absorbed by the sea, it takes longer every year for the freeze to start, and the melt lasts longer, and each year more ice melts, making it easier for the next years ice to melt, so it will start earlier.  And so on, and so on. 

Normally, the summer sea ice goes up and down depending on each year's weather conditions, but as the earth gets warmer, the process runs away. and the more ice melts, the less sunlight gets reflected into space, and the warmer it gets.

Does this mean the seas will start to boil?  No, the world will not come to an end.  Earth has been here for billions of years and it still hasn't turned into Mars or Venus.  There will be no runaway greenhouse effect destroying the planet, we've survived meteor strikes and volcanic eruptions and ice ages in the past.  The climate system is a feedback system and it will eventually settle down at some new, higher temperature equilibrium.  But what will happen is the new climate regime will be different than the one we have now.  Areas that are now deserts, will get rain.  And vice versa.  The global climate will change, and global agriculture will look very different.  Paradoxically, in some places, like Europe, we may even get another ice age.  After all, England is at the same Latitude as Labrador.  If melting ice at the N pole shuts down the Gulf Stream, Europe will look like Northern Canada, and the US Great Plains may wind up drying out.  We just don't know.  We don't understand climate all that well.  The one thing we can count on is things will change. I think this summer's drought and heat waves are just a hint of things to come.

What about the S pole? The situation in the Antarctic is more stable, since it is not ice a few feet thick floating on water, surrounded by land.  The Antarctic is ice thousands of feet thick on top of  rock, surrounded by ocean..  The ice is melting like crazy down  there too, but as long as we haven't gotten down to bare rock, most sunlight will be reflected into space.  Sea ice will actually increase as the continental glacier calves into the surrounding Antarctic Ocean.  And that's exactly what the satellites are showing us.  The situation will get super critical in the north long before it becomes an issue in the south.  Unfortunately, the northern hemisphere is where most of the land is, and where most of the people live.

Don't take my word for it. There are the websites.  Check out the data for yourselves.

[Citroen/Dave]

Thanks HenryC for you comments and references. 

We could get political here but that would change the purpose of the Lounge.

As a Geologist I have information about the last Ice Age's influence in Virginia.  An upper four foot layer of gray silt and clay that was of airborne glacial origin has been found exposed along the Chesapeake Bay. (Not the Miocene dated layer with shark teeth.) I have found the same layer in the base sediments in almost all the 100's of creeks I have investigated in Central Virginia and elsewhere. The dust storms kicked up at the melt front of continental glaciation were not pleasent as the Clovis people and 30 mega mammals were wiped out about 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age.  (See the Discovery Channel's "Back to 10,000 BC" program, not the movie of the same name.) Clovis points are found just below the glacial dust layer. These mega mammals survived 20 or so previous Ice Ages but the last one was particularly devastating, wiping out a human culture as well.

As the climate adjusts by heating, triggering another Ice Age is a real possibility.  The clockwise flow of the Atlantic may be stopped by the introduction of surface fresh water from melting ice, a trigger mechanism for major change from a hot planet back to cold. The sifi movie "The Day After Tomorrow" is based on the phenomena that I am concerned about. 

Enjoy the sailing and beach combing. . .  Clovis points have been found eroded out of the sediments on Solomon's or St Mary's Island, but be concerned about the melting of the ice cap.

Dave

[chas5131]

So, when should I sell my place that is at 9,000 feet in the Rockies?   

[HenryC]

"We could get political here but that would change the purpose of the Lounge."

This is not politics, it's science.  I have degrees in hard science (Astronomy), Mathematics, and Earth Sciences (Geography) and 40 years of industrial experience in navigation, aerial photo mapping, computer cartography for oil and mineral exploration, satellite imagery and remote sensing for earth resources inventory and management, and Geographic Information Systems.  I also worked in the public relations end of the Nuclear Power industry, so it's not exactly my first political rodeo either.

What we're seeing here is not the sort of long term trend you get over deep geological time, such as an ice age or the droughts and temperature extremes caused by continental drift.  It's more like the rapid change the earth climate experiences from a brief, violent event, such as an asteroid or cometary impact or a supervolcano eruption.  Although the current climate excursion is most likely caused by changes in the atmosphere's composition due to our rapidly evolving agricultural, industrial and land use practices over the last few hundred years, it may also be superimposed on one or more subtle long-term cycles, terrestrial or astronomical.  In any case, I don't foresee a runaway Greenhouse Effect, or a catastrophic collapse of the earth's climate regulation system.  The earth has absorbed much more damage in the past than we can inflict on it in just a couple of centuries, it will adjust and survive.

The question is not whether the earth will survive more or less intact, but whether our current industrial civilization can survive a change of climate that will affect rainfall and temperature, frequency of storms, alterations in sea level, and other factors at a more moderate scale.  If the Corn and Wheat Belts suddenly start looking more like Utah, and if the average temperature or rainfall in Europe starts looking more like Siberia, changing substantially over the course of a human lifetime, it might require the resettlement of hundreds of millions of people.  The average worldwide temperature will go up by a few degrees before the earth stabilizes at a new climate equilibrium; in itself, no big deal.  But the movement of air masses and storm systems and overall climate changes would make every current nation face a host of unpredictable challenges, and they would have to be dealt with not in a matter of centuries, but decades. In any case, the agricultural and industrial consequences would inevitably lead to political and economic conflict.   

I don't see any of this affecting me personally, I'm 65 years old and I don't have any kids. I may see this all get rolling, but I doubt I'll be around to see how it turns out.  But if you have reason to be concerned about what may be happening on earth a few decades, or a generation down the line, then what's going on in the Arctic now is a wake-up call.  We still may have time, if we start now, to do something about it, or at least, to delay or soften the effects.

Unfortunately, that would be very political.

[Citroen/Dave]

HenryC,

I'm glad that you made the comments about science and politics.  Right on!  My local "University" throws religion in the mix to obscure science and to make political agendas based on religious beliefs.  Crazy people. . .

Re: "Back to 10,000BC", the Discovery Chanel program, not the movie of the same name.  At Clovis sites across the country, in the layer immediately above the Clovis extinction event, micro meteorites are found which contain a very unique meteor-signature; micro diamonds.  A near miss aerial explosion or an Ice Sheet hit of a diamond bearing meteor may have been the short term climate change instigator:  the 4 foot blue/gray clay layer of airborne glacial origin found along the Chesapeake Bay.  Again, 30 mega mammals and the Clovis people died out apparently from the dust clouds of airborne glacial dust as the Continental Ice Sheet receded from a very dramatic climate change.

Another look into this time period is published by the same folks in the Discovery Chanel program:  "Across Atlantic Ice, the Origin of America's Clovis Culture" by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley.  Talk about small boat adventures, they make a hypothesis that a French/Spanish comunity of perhaps small-boat handling people made a westward trek to the Chesapeake region along the Continental Ice Sheet's southern border. From there the Clovis people spread across the US before extinction. Stanford and Bradley base their hypothesis on the fact that the European Solutrean culture produced projectile points that appear to be the forrunner of the Clovis culture projectile points and other tools.  And the fact that water drawn up by Continental Ice Sheets of the last Ice Age exposed the continental margins, such as the Grand Banks, making a search for food a possible drive to move the Sultrean people into new territory, westward.

Citroen/Dave

[HenryC]

I remember seeing that same show about the Clovis points and their possible European origin.  It can't be ruled out.  People tend to forget that there was already at least one great Neolithic seafaring culture, the Polynesians, so it is not out of the question that there were others,  perhaps many others,  in the distant past.

The Polynesians explored and settled most of the Pacific basin using sophisticated maritime technology and navigational techniques.  What makes this particularly remarkable is that they accomplished this with the limited boat-building materials available on their small, isolated island communities.  These islands simply don't have the wood, fiber, and stone resources needed for boats, rigs, and tools.  They had no metals and little livestock besides pigs and chickens. They also had small populations, and little contact with strangers to bring them ideas and trade goods.  What they accomplished is truly amazing when you consider what they had to work with.  And these were "primitive", Stone Age peoples. 

Much later, there may have been others.  We know that years before Columbus, the Portuguese were fishing for cod on the Grand Banks, just a few day's sail from NewFoundland.   It's not unreasonable to assume they knew about mainland North America, they probably just didn't have much use for it except as a place to pull in for repairs or fresh water. Columbus is said to have shipped with them as a young man,  which  explains how he was so familiar with the N Atlantic Tradewinds he counted on bringing him home from "the Indies". And of course, we know about the Norse explorations in that area just a few centuries earlier.

We have to keep in mind that in those days, when a sailor found a new area suitable for trade or fishing, or a safe harbor he could use in emergencies or to replenish and refit, he wasn't likely to tell his merchant competitors about it.

[chas5131]

I suppose you know about Matt Rutherford's circumnavigation around the Americas?  It was covered in the recent Sail magazine and here-
http://www.solotheamericas.org/
The Northwest Passage and Cape Horn in a 27 footer.   

[HenryC]

He did it the easy way, counter-clockwise.  Rounding Cape Horn from E to W, the "uphill route" is the MANLY way to do do it.

Seriously, that is an incredible accomplishment.  And for a worthy cause, too.  I find it interesting he is having a tough time weaning himself from his sailing addiction.  Other solo sailors, like Robin Knox Graham, have ended their adventures by moving into central continental locations as far away from the sea as possible.

Did you check out the waterline growth on his boat? 

[Bob23]

   Good article in the latest Good Old Boat magazine. Matt was at the recent Annapolis show the first weekend in October but I was unable to attend.
   Quite an accomplishment for anyone in any boat but in a 27' Albin Vega, which I believe is a very capable coastal cruiser, even more of a feat.
   Have you read the books "1421" where the author presents compelling evidence that the Chinese explored the globe beginning that year? And "The Last Navigator"?
bob23

[HenryC]

I read 'The Last Navigator', but not '1421'. 

I wouldn't be surprised about the Chinese.  They had a very advanced maritime tech, having perfected rigs that could sail to windward, the centerline rudder, compatmentalized hulls and tankage, the magnetic compass, and other innovations centuries before the Europeans.  I also remember reading the Chinese sending a huge fleet of giant ships to Arabian waters during medieval times in an effort to break the Arab middleman control on E-W trade through their position straddling the caravan routes and Indian Ocean shipping.

Supposedly, it was a group of Chinese merchants who forced the Emperor to put a stop to this effort, because it would threaten their trade monopolies within China. 

At the time Columbus discovered America, the Chinese already had ships capable of crossing the Pacific, in fact, vessels much more advanced than anything in Europe.  It seems the major obstacle to Chinese expansion was that there was no motivation for it.  They already had everything they neeeded.  They didn't need any more trade with the rest of the world.

In the 1800s, the Europeans learned this the hard way.  They had trouble trading with China because the Chinese didn't need anything the Westerners had.  Their solution to this problem, to introduce Turkish opium and create a market for it, didn't make us any friends in that part of the world.

BTW, I have an article scheduled to appear in Good Old Boat this coming March.  I'll keep you posted.

[Bob23]

Thanks; I'll watch for your article. If you get a chance, read 1421. He presents a very strong case for the world exploration by the Chinese starting in 1420 (hence the name...haha). I may read it again.
What did you think of "The Last Navigator"? At this stage of my life, I doubt I'll do any crossings but I'm a nautical book junkie, to be sure. When it comes to nautical titles, I'll read anything that comes my way!
bob23

[HenryC]

I was very impressed by 'The Last Navigator'.  I was not familiar with the feats of the Polynesian seafarers until I read that book, and it filled with me great admiration for those people.  They were salty dudes! Several films and documentaries were made about those native mariners and their exploits.  I'm glad their accomplishments are part of world lore now, there's so much we've lost forever...

Did you know Steve Thomas, the author, went on to fame as host of the "This Old House" TV series?  We all owe him a great debt for bringing alive the story of Mau Pialug, the last of the traditional Micronesian Wayfarers.  Mau died in 2010.  I'm glad a good man who knew the sea and western navigation was around to tell his story and fill in some of the details of that lost era. There is now a movement among those peoples to relearn the ancient arts of wayfaring, but expertise like the old Wayfarers had will never fully come back again.  I consider myself a good navigator, but without a compass I am helpless, and out of sight of land I need my timepieces, charts, sextants and almanacs.  What those "primitive" peoples were able to accomplish with stone age tools and materials is a testimony to the grandeur of the human spirit and the power of the human intellect.  I am in awe of them.

Pialug died at the age of 78, so the time when his skills were fully a part of the way of life of his people is not something from the dim, distant past.  It is from a time still within the memory of many people alive today. 

Stone age cultures are rapidly dying off, or becoming dependent on modern firearms, tools, internal combustion engines, clothing and other artifacts they can no longer make from the materials in their environment.  These people survived and flourished in places where we can't live for more than a few hours or days without  massive infusions of technology and supplies brought in from outside.  Stone age peoples conquered the open ocean, the Arctic, the desert, the rain forest, and many other hostile places with just what was available to them there naturally.  Even today, Eskimo cold weather clothing is considered superior to our modern synthetics, although fewer and fewer of them still know how to make them.

Most of us can't even start a fire without specialized equipment.  Its a sobering thought.