Position update 20.29 CEST: 69.78807 N, 168.32016 W – North of Point Hope. Water temperature: 9.0ËšC
Expedition Report:
From our position in the middle of the Chukchi Sea, the sea between the Russian autonomous area of Chukotka and Alaska, the 49th state of the USA, we can look back on a voyage through the Northeast Passage – or the Northern Sea Route, as they say in Russia.It is obvious that the conditions met by the early explorers such as Vitus Bering, Fridtjof Nansen, Adolf Erik Nordenski¶ld and Roald Amundsen no longer exists. We passed through in a few weeks, while our predecessors were forced to overwinter once or even twice. Still, it is not an easy passage for any kind of boat or vessel. There is still ice, although not to the extent there used to be, but plenty to make conditions unpredictable for ships. In addition many of the seas you have to pass are very shallow. In the East Siberian Sea, the shipping lane is located 50 nautical miles off the coast, in order for there to be sufficient depth for bigger ships. Lights, buoys and nautical markings are scarce.
That’s from a blog posting by Thorleif Thorleifsson, captain of the “Northern Passage,” offering his “reflections” from the Chukchi Sea. He notes in an update,”The water temperature is 7.5 degrees. If we weren’t sailing, it would be a great temperature for a swim!” [He means degrees Celsius, of course.] And that’s why the ice can keep melting even after the air temperature goes below freezing.
Here’s a video from the ship, with the caption, “In the dark of night, on the Chukchi Sea off Wrangel Island, three men steer the “Northern Passage” past ice floes and icebergs. Persistence and caution is demanded every moment of their journey!
The captain’s reflections continue:
In the 1930s the USSR prioritized the Northern Sea Route as a major development project. Despite massive investment in infrastructure, navigation aids, ships and establishment of local towns along the coast, the Sea Route never did become “the highway of the north”.
Today, however, it seems that this old vision of a more regular passage of ships, at least in the summertime, is being reawakened. Atomflot, the operator of icebreakers in these northern seas, has a fleet of modern ships. During our weeks along this coast we have been in daily contact with people representing this organisation and other authorities – and from the first moment we have meet professionalism and service-mindedness. They have not questioned the presence of a tiny trimaran zigzagging in between ice floes, but welcomed our presence and interest. Of course the Russians are not alone in searching for opportunities in the north. The Norwegians are most definitely making their efforts as well. A look at our list of sponsors is telling. It includes North Energy, the Centre for High North Logistics in Kirkenes, Tschudi Shipping and the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association (New Horizons).
We understand the possibilities in Arctic shipping, and we fully understand the challenges. One of them is the sensitivity of this marine area. However, we do believe that based on the professionalism we have met so far among our Russian and Norwegian friends, the visions of future shipping along the Northern Sea Route can be developed in a balanced and secure way.
We have sailed through the Northeast Passage. At the moment our challenge is a prevailing easterly wind that is forcing us to tack the whole way across the Chukchi Sea. To put this challenge in perspective, I should mention that Chukchi is twice the size of the North Sea. We’re making our best efforts to sail tactically, using downloaded weather files and good advice from our weather magician Marc de Keyser. Just 70 nautical miles to the north, we find our friends on board “Peter 1″, whom we are happy to see back on track after their repairs in Pevek.
.Thorleif Thorleifsson, captain
“Northern Passage”
3 September, Chukchi Sea
Safe journey!
Related Posts:
- Arctic sea ice volume heads toward record low as Northwest Passage melts free fourth year in a row
- Where on Earth is it unusually warm? Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is full of rotten ice
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Ah the benefits of a warming planet! “…the visions of future shipping along the Northern Sea Route can be developed in a balanced and secure way.” That is what we always say and hope. This new ‘development’ is hoped to be safe and secure. Like tar sand development and tuna fishing. Like our wonderful management of the worlds forests. Like our ‘balanced’ use of the Colorado River. Now we have visions of arctic shipping dancing in our heads. The oil drilling will soon follow.
That’s astoundingly warm for that region, at least as I imagine it–although still pretty cold for swimming. But how does it compare to previous measurements? BTW, I think you mean, ‘even after the air temperature goes below freezing’.
Could the crew see Sarah Palin’s house?
7.5 deg Celsius is still pretty chilly for a swim. It may be abnormally warm for that part of the ocean, but lets not get too enthusiastic.
“It is the dull man who is certain and the certain man who is dull.”
-H. L. Mencken
[JR: And yet this is boring after the umpteenth reposting.]
This new ‘development’ is hoped to be safe and secure. Like tar sand development and tuna fishing. Like our wonderful management of the worlds forests.
Re your blog of 7/19/2010 (comments are since closed), I ran your video by Stephen Schneider, stopped it, then resumed later. I then found it had been hijacked by a denialialista site (with an Australian accent – my country). Anyone else had this problem?
Joe, last night your blog got to done loading, but only displayed a white screen (Firefox on Ubuntu). My other machine with older Firefox only loads a blue screen for CP. Thats why I’ve been an on again off again commenter/reader. You might want to consider getting more reliable blog software.
7.5 C sounds pretty warm to me. Seawater freezes at roughly -2C, so it must cool by 9.5C before it can begin refreeze. To cool water by 80C takes the same amount of heat removal as freezing it. And I’d bet the thickness of this warm water is several times the thickness of the (now seasonal) ice. Freeze over should be considerably delayed. That probably means more water vapour for early season snows.
4. Darryl Williams says:
Was this intended to be ironic, because if so I’m afraid I missed it. When do we get to be excited, or worried, or “enthusiastic”? When it is up to bath water temperature? Because it seems reasonable to expect that by that time our “enthusiasm” will be just a trifle too late.
If he can see Palin’s house, he’d better keep his head down.
Captain Borge Ousland updates his blog as follows:
20.29 CEST: 69.78807 N, 168.32016 W – North of Point Hope. Water temperature: 9.0˚C
An Arctic Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Anomaly map is here:
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png
@5 JR: Hadn’t seen that drop of “precious” wisdom before. My favorite is when they spout Emerson’s “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of lesser minds.” ignoring that the ultimate “foolish consistency” is the constant, incessant quoting of this at the drop of a hat for all occasions.
#9 Gary – yes, when I look back at my comment, it doesn’t read too well – I should have added “…about swimming in it.” I didn’t mean it in the duh-nier sense, as in “oh wow, that temp is no big deal”; rather, I meant it in the sense of ” thats still waaaaaaay too cold for swimming.”
Thanks for the clarification, Darryl.
(Once, as a much younger person, a group of us went into water that cold. Only way any of us could get there was to cannonball into it. Amazing the shock didn’t kill us!)
That’s an impressive video for at least three reasons. One, sailing at night among icebergs in a multihull is like sailing at top speed, blindfolded, among rocks that move. Not for the faint of heart. Two, Wrangell Island is major polar bear habitat, and polar bears, good swimmers that they are, have no qualms about climbing aboard manmade structures. I’d be praying for wind to fill the sails. Three, the amount of open water is astounding.
It used to be that the summer ice pack retreated only a few miles offshore, and the nearshore waters had plenty of large bergs and bergy bits. When I flew up there in 2001, the ice pack was 40 miles out but still visible from the air. Several polar bears were stranded ashore and were foraging at the Barrow dump. Now there’s mostly open water with a little ice. No wonder a young polar bear got confused and walked 100 miles inland (down the Dalton highway) looking for food a few years ago.
In mid-decade, when the effort to list the polar bear as a threatened species was stalled because of oil industry executives urging the White House to force-issue a “not warranted” decision that would have dismissed it, the story broke about political manipulation of climate change science at NASA, and a relatively unknown scientist named Dr James Hansen risked his career to expose the political interference. Before Hansen did that, government agency employees were told “Climate change does not exist and you are forbidden to talk about it.” Retaliation was not just a threat then. The case for listing the polar bear hung to a large degree on ice loss, which of course meant acknowledging climate change.
Video reminders like this are good augmenters of scientific fact. Time-lapse photography is even better. One of the best is at: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_balog_time_lapse_proof_of_extreme_ice_loss.html
I’m Norwegian, and if I may offer some perspective, you don’t have to be Børge Ousland or Thorleif Thorleifsson to swim in water at 7.5 degrees Celsius. It is done here all the time, and I gather most of us have also tried swimming in ice conditions around 0 degrees C, as I have on several occasions. It is refreshing, but it certainly won’t kill you. Well, hypothermia would eventually, of course, but you don’t swim lazily around waiting for that to happen – you get up before you stop shaking. So this hardy explorer probably meant what he was saying.
BTW there is a small but important error in your posting: “And that’s why the ice can keep melting even after the air temperature goes ABOVE freezing.” I am pretty sure you mean below!
[JR: Good catch!]
I am surprised that the temperatures are still so high in these waters. Looking at Cryosphere Today, the East Siberian Sea is now just about the only place with more ice area left than in 2009. Pretty much all other areas are now below, as is, of course, the total area. And the melting may still continue a few more weeks. (For some reason, a lot of people seem focused on extent, while we should rather look at area, and eventually volume.)
This is my first posting here, but I’ve been following your excellent blog for years. Thanks for all the good work!
When I was at Kiruna in 2000 visiting the Ice hotel I came across the “Coldest walk you will ever do”. It was a sauna out on the lake. Next to it was a 10′ square hole in the ice. The idea was that you heated yourself in the sauna, then walked out (normally naked), into the -32 deg C air and then dive into the water at 4-5 DegC
The guide explained that when you are in 4 DegC water and the air above you is -32, you don’t want to come out because it’s “warm in there”.
I watched them doing it!
It is quite commone in Scandiavia to exit the Sauna and either roll in the snow or jump in the lake.
I was pretty sure that the captain was being genuine with this post.
The San Francisco Bay gets down to 8C in the winter.
People swim in it every day.
I thought I’d mention something which seems to have been missed in the overall point about the temperature.
This log entry http://www.ousland.no/2010/09/through-the-ice-into-the-chukchi-sea/
Clearly identifies why they met so much Ice…..
“We decided to sail through the ice belt rather than around it. We are now actually in the middle of a belt of drift ice that streches from Wrangel Island southwards. In tomorrow’s report we’ll tell you more than I can now. I assure you it’s quite exiting sailing!”
This has, previously, been the environment for icebreakers, not trimirans…..
Bob Wallace wrote: “The San Francisco Bay gets down to 8°C in the winter. People swim in it every day.”
And of course there are the various “Polar Bear” clubs dedicated to swimming in freezing weather.
I’ve read that Antarctic expeditions have something called the “250 Club.” To become a member, you exit a sauna where the temperature is at or near 200°F and plunge into a snowbank at 50 below.
OT
I’ve seen a statement ( I believe from the Coast Guard), called the 50-50 rule. In 50F water, you have a 50-50 chance of living 50 minutes.
Of course, it depends on the person.
While there are people who swim all year in SF Bay, I think most find it too cold, and barely warm enough in summer.
Commercial fishermen in the Bering Sea are said to have about 10 minutes in the water before hypothermia will overcome them. They don’t fish for crab in summer.
While I don’t doubt the cold water dips enjoyed by Scandanavians are bracing, I wouldn’t stay in too long.