Cruising the Northwest or Northeast Passage

[SailOar]

Four Kayakers Will Try to Paddle the Entire Northwest Passage in One Season

The fabled Northwest Passage is changing as the world warms. The notoriously difficult arctic sea route that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific remains open for longer each year. This August, West Hansen, Jeff Wueste, Rebekah Feaster, and Jimmy Harvey are hoping to take advantage of the open water to kayak the 3,000km in a single season. If successful, they will be the first to kayak the entire Northwest Passage.

[Sand crab]

Bear chow.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Four Kayakers Will Try to Paddle the Entire Northwest Passage in One Season
The fabled Northwest Passage is changing as the world warms. The notoriously difficult arctic sea route that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific remains open for longer each year. This August, West Hansen, Jeff Wueste, Rebekah Feaster, and Jimmy Harvey are hoping to take advantage of the open water to kayak the 3,000km in a single season. If successful, they will be the first to kayak the entire Northwest Passage.

They’ve budgeted 60 days for the 3,000 km [1,864 mi.] expedition, so anticipate a daily average distance of 50 km [31 m/d].
Assuming an 8 hour paddling day, that would require an average speed of ± 6.25km/h [3.9 mph] - pretty good*, for a sustained effort.

They'll have weather lay days, so will actually have to travel further/faster, than above.

* The world record for The Farthest distance by canoe / kayak on flat water in 24 hours is 251.71 km [156.41 miles]. An average speed of 10.49 km per hour [6 mph].
➥ https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com...er-in-24-hours

[jackdale]

A NWP attempt this year.

https://www.northernlightstwo.com/

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Four Kayakers Will Try to Paddle the Entire Northwest Passage in One Season

The fabled Northwest Passage is changing as the world warms. The notoriously difficult arctic sea route that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific remains open for longer each year. This August, West Hansen, Jeff Wueste, Rebekah Feaster, and Jimmy Harvey are hoping to take advantage of the open water to kayak the 3,000km in a single season. If successful, they will be the first to kayak the entire Northwest Passage.

400 kilometres in, Texan kayakers pull plug on Northwest Passage expedition

Buffeted by bad weather and unexpected delays, the remaining members of the Arctic Cowboys kayaking team have stowed their oars in Arctic Bay, Nunavut, and called off this summer's attempt to paddle the Northwest Passage.

......

The Arctic Cowboys aren't alone in having to put off their goals to paddle the Northwest Passage. Earlier this month, Karl Kruger had to suspend his attempt to be the first person to paddleboard across the passage — after 15 days and 420 miles, he stored his board in Paulatuk and plans to return next summer to do another leg of the journey.

[SailOar]

'Hallowed space': Divers pull 275 artifacts from 2022 excavation of Franklin ship

"We came across a folio — a leather book cover, beautifully embossed — with pages inside. It actually has the feather quill pen still tucked inside the cover like a journal that you might write in and put on your bedside table before turning in."

[Drunkonwatch]

Where’s the Polar posse? Any groups planning this trip from starboard or port side? It is international recognized route as far I know but happy to be corrected.

[SailOar]

Melting Sea Ice May Fog Out the Famed Northwest Passage

Arctic sea ice is rapidly vanishing as the world warms, opening up potential new shipping routes across the top of the world. But there’s a catch: Less ice means more fog, making it harder and more dangerous for ships to navigate the thawing sea.

It’s an overlooked climate trade-off, according to a new study. And while new Arctic passages often are touted as faster alternatives to conventional shipping routes through the Panama and Suez canals, foggy conditions can cause delays.

Fog in the Northwest Passage, which snakes through the Canadian Archipelago, could slow projected shipping times by as much as three days in the coming years, the study suggests. And it could increase the odds of collisions with icebergs floating in the water.

[GordMay]

The Arctic could experience ice-free Septembers as early as the 2030s

A paper [1], published Tuesday in the journal Nature, has concluded that northern Arctic waters could be open for months at a time, as early as 2030 [to 2050], even if we manage to drastically scale back greenhouse gas emissions.

Past estimates* suggested summer ice wouldn't disappear until the 2040s, or might even survive, but what climate models* say ‘should be happening’ to sea ice, don’t predict what's actually going on.
“... a dominant influence of greenhouse gas increases on Arctic sea ice area is detectable in three observational datasets in all months of the year, but is on average underestimated by CMIP6 models...”

The new research [1] suggests that, even in a fairly low-emissions scenario that holds the planet’s warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, regular years without summer Arctic sea ice could occur in the 2050s.

The trend gets worse as the emissions levels increase. In the worst-case scenario, the study said, there is a possibility that the Arctic could have Septembers with no ice as soon as the 2030s, a decade earlier than previous research indicated.

That would mean that, by the end of the melt season in September, the Arctic would have less than one million square kilometres of sea ice, even under low emissions. If emissions remain high, that ice-free period could last months.

Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle, peaking in the unbroken darkness of winter, and then dwindling in the equally constant glare of summer. Even if ice does dip below 1 million square kilometers in area at the summer low in September — a threshold deemed to represent a basically ice-free ocean — that does not mean it won’t rebound quickly in the winter or persist through summer the next year. Much depends on weather. But the warming of the Earth makes it easier for the ice to melt, and harder for it to rebound.

An ice-free Arctic would certainly hasten the warming [already warming at three times the global average] of lands and air around the waters, changing them drastically, and also leading to thawing permafrost and impacts on infrastructure, impacts on food systems.

The research published this week follows on the heels of British Antarctic Survey report [2], last Friday, saying Antarctic changes could become tipping points, with global implications.

Also last week, the World Meteorological Organization called for cryosphere changes to be put at the top of the global agenda [3], with greater international cooperation and data sharing, in order to close knowledge gaps in the polar regions.

[1] “Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic even under a low emission scenario” ~ by Kim, YH., Min, SK., & Gillett, N.P. et al.
The authors of the study compared years of satellite observations of Arctic ice to 10 existing climate models. The satellite imagery showed a starker loss in Arctic ice than climate models projected, informing the authors’ predictions of an even faster decline.
Open Access, Peer Reviewed ➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38511-8

* The latest generation Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models

[2] “Antarctic tipping points” ~ by Louise Sime et al [British Antarctic Survey]
➥ https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/...ipping-points/
➥ https://www.bas.ac.uk/wp-content/upl...port_Jun23.pdf

[3] “Rapid changes in cryosphere demand urgent, coordinated action” ~ WMO Press Release
➥ https://public.wmo.int/en/media/pres...dinated-action

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Melting Sea Ice May Fog Out the Famed Northwest Passage

Arctic sea ice is rapidly vanishing as the world warms, opening up potential new shipping routes across the top of the world. But there’s a catch: Less ice means more fog, making it harder and more dangerous for ships to navigate the thawing sea.

It’s an overlooked climate trade-off, according to a new study. And while new Arctic passages often are touted as faster alternatives to conventional shipping routes through the Panama and Suez canals, foggy conditions can cause delays.

Fog in the Northwest Passage, which snakes through the Canadian Archipelago, could slow projected shipping times by as much as three days in the coming years, the study suggests. And it could increase the odds of collisions with icebergs floating in the water.

Not an actual threat IMO (I live 70deg N). The water, even when ice free, is still cold. This keeps evaporation low as the humidity levels. Later in the autumn that might become an issue but mostly for few hours early mornings. Nothing like around Scotland for days..

[GordMay]

Arctic sea smoke (steam fog) is sea smoke forming over small patches of open water in sea ice.
It forms when a light wind of very cold air mixes with a shallow layer of saturated warm air, immediately above the (relatively) warmer water. The warmer air is cooled beyond the dew point, and can no longer hold as much water vapor, so the excess condenses out.
Because this type of fog requires very low air temperatures, it is uncommon in temperate climates, but is common in the Arctic and Antarctic (October - April).

➥ https://www66.statcan.gc.ca/eng/1967...61_p.%2061.pdf

➥ https://www.weather.gov/media/zhu/ZH..._guide/fog.pdf

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Arctic sea smoke (steam fog) is sea smoke forming over small patches of open water in sea ice.
It forms when a light wind of very cold air mixes with a shallow layer of saturated warm air, immediately above the (relatively) warmer water. The warmer air is cooled beyond the dew point, and can no longer hold as much water vapor, so the excess condenses out.
Because this type of fog requires very low air temperatures, it is uncommon in temperate climates, but is common in the Arctic and Antarctic (October - April).

➥ https://www66.statcan.gc.ca/eng/1967...61_p.%2061.pdf

➥ https://www.weather.gov/media/zhu/ZH..._guide/fog.pdf

That is not during sailing season..

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

That is not during sailing season..

Not yet.

That's the thing, about "change". The future may be, somehow, different, from the past [our experience].

“The future ain’t what it used to be."
"It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."
~ Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

That is not during sailing season..

The type of fog mentioned in the article does form in the sailing/steaming season.

The fog is often heaviest in areas where patches of open water have newly formed, close to the edge of the ice. And as Arctic sea ice continues to melt away, fog is likely to increase over the new stretches of open ocean.

The researchers used historic data on Arctic fog conditions, combined with model simulations, to investigate how these conditions might affect shipping routes in the future. They examined both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route, which cuts along the Russian coastline. Both passages are becoming increasingly navigable as more ice melts away, opening up possibilities for expanded trade routes.

But the research finds that fog likely has already slowed sailing times through both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route. And it will cause further delays in the coming decades.