Slashdot Mirror
3-Man Team Begins Ice-Survey Trek To the North Pole
Hugh Pickens writes "Satellites have shown how the Arctic sea-ice has been shrinking in recent years, but a three-man scientific team making an expedition to the North Pole should give scientists a better idea of how thin the ice is becoming. 'We're making the surface journey because that's the only way we have of gathering these direct observations of how thick the snow and the ice is,' said team leader Pen Hadow, who in 2003 became the first person to trek solo and without support from Canada to the North Pole. 'That's what the scientists really need to know.' There is more at stake for the British team than achieving some invented personal goal: 'The journey's going to be about 700 miles in distance, taking about three months,' said Hadow. 'In the earlier phases, the temperatures are about minus 50 degrees ... And we're towing sledges with our camping equipment and our survey equipment — almost twice our body weights — for most of the distance.'"
"Arctic ice modeler Wieslaw Maslowski, a science adviser to the survey, hopes the data gathered during the journey will enable him to refine his forecast of when the first ice-free summer might arrive. 'According to our studies, it's very likely that if this current trend of ice decline based on the last decade or so continues, or accelerates, the ice might be almost gone in summer sometime between 2010 and 2016.'"
Because if you RTFA, it states that they expect to encounter gaps in the ice.
If that happens, they expect to have to swim "for up to two hours at a time in darkness", all the time still towing their equipment behind them.
I'm on my way to the North Pole on a similar expedition, which is starting today. We're taking a twin otter to Eureka, refueling, and then flying out to Ward Hunt Island. We should be on the Ice tonight. The trek (on skis) is about 60 days, the first 10-20 of which are in relative darkness 24/7. We will be towing 160KG sleds that house all our equipment and food for 30 days. The sleds float as the ice oftentimes cracks, and we have to swim across open leads. Last year, I did the same with the South Pole, starting at Hercules Inlet and skiing all the way up to the South Pole. I blogged live from there, and am blogging live on this journey. This will be the last of my 3 poles challenge (Everest, South, North), and is by far the most difficult and dangerous. If we don't contact anyone in 72 hours, planes are sent out to find us - if ever. Check it out at: www.TheThreePoles.com --Maxime Chaya-- Lebanese Seven Summiteer
The ice is not consistently thick enough to support machines of any sort, and open leads in ice (open water cracks) require full submersion of self (in an immersion suit) to cross. This is not a Top Gear episode, this is a real adventure like back in the day, when there were hardened explorers.
--Maxime Chaya blogging live from the North Pole--
Unlike a car, you don't have to worry about fuel, and you can still cover 50 miles per day. Plus, snowkites have the ability to jump over crevices motorized vehicles can't cross.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
That's 9-13 hrs/day. With the rest spent trying not to die.
Realistically, I would expect them to travel as far as they can in a given day. If they manage 20 miles in a single day, great, they just got a little bit ahead so when bad things happen on those days they barely make 1 mile, they'll still be okay.
Of course, I could read the article and find out if they address this, but (this being slashdot) I won't.
I think these chaps must not be just British, but in fact English.
Because if they were Welsh they'd fly to the Bahamas, get sunburned, fly back and report "Saw lots of ice. Very cold, very white."
And if they were Scottish they wouldn't bother because they'd just go to Aberdeen, where it's proper cold.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
If they measure from the bottom they'll be measuring its height. They want to measure its depth so they have to do it from the top down.
rewriting history since 2109
It's actually quite possible, since you're pulling not carrying. In Antarctica, during my South Pole expedition, I was pulling over 100 KGs uphill for over 600 nautical miles. Daily energy consumption is around 9000 calories. It's all about pace, not speed. --Maxime Chaya www.TheThreePoles.com
It's the summer ice extent that matters. It's dark in the winter so any albedo effect is irrelevant.
The ice melts during the summer. So if you've only got 1ft thick ice then it will melt before the winter freeze restarts. If you've got 100ft thick ice then (in the past) the winter freeze restored the thinning due to the summer melt.
That's not happening now. You can argue that summer 2007 was a freak year for ice extent. 2008 wasn't, and yet the summer 2008 minimum was barely more than the 2007 minimum.
That's the problem with single year ice (which also tends to be more salty and so melts at a lower temperature)
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
some photos of what we ate during the South Pole expedition
3/4 way through the expedition, i had lost most of my body fat. i was eating through my own muscle tissue, and became severely ill and weak. i had to increase my calorie intake to 10000 calories in order to start moving again, which was a risk i had to take (increase intake and risk finishing all the food before making it to our destination).
one thing i hadn't done for the south pole expedition was to gain weight. you're supposed to go up to 25% fat in body mass. i was down at around 10%. that extra 15% would have given me the extra energy reserves that i needed.
this time around i managed to get myself up to 15% but i got too nauseous to take on more...
this is what i looked like before i became ill