North Pole sea ice half as thick as 2001
Doug O’Harra | Aug 25, 2011Sea ice floating near the top of the world appears to be half as thick as it was 10 years ago, according to reports from a premier German research icebreaker on a nine-week mission to survey the Arctic Ocean from one side to the other.
The 387-foot Polarstern plowed through floes at the geographic North Pole at exactly 11:42 p.m. ADT on Aug. 21 and is now steaming south toward Canada, according to this story posted by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.
Over the past few weeks, initial measurements of sea ice have averaged about .9 meters or about three feet — 1.1 meters thinner than comparable measurements taken in 2001, the last time the Polarstern visited the North Pole and a season when observed floe depth matched the long-term average.
But in what could be a disconcerting harbinger for the 2010 melt season — about to reach its low point during the next three to four weeks — the ice thickness measured by Polarstern scientists this summer is almost exactly the same as measurements taken in the central Arctic in 2007.
North Pole ice gets carried out the Fram Strait and is often thin. In the 1950s submarines surfaced at the North Pole in the winter in very thin ice. But if you go a short distance towards Alaska or Canada, the ice is much thicker . What a complete load of cherry picked BS.
“North Pole ice gets carried out the Fram Strait and is often thin”
How long does it take ice at the pole to reach Fram Strait? Or does it usually melt out before it gets there?
Is the PIPS ice thickness map reliable (does it match in situ observations or MODIS images)? How many areas of 2.5+meter ice (per PIPS) were verified by the Polarstern or the Healy?
How much ice is transported out of Fram Strait during the summer? Is it usually less than 1/2 million square kilometers? How does that compare to the total average summer area loss of 10 million square kilometers?
Francis Sumner and I’m fasinated by polar ice.