Northwest Passage - 2017

[DeepFrz]

Skating on thin ice (article from the Economist.

The thawing Arctic threatens an environmental catastrophe
Commercial opportunities are vastly outweighed by damage to the climate

Article in the Economist. The eastern arctic, along Russia is more open and accessible than the NW Passage these days however the growlers and storms make it a dangerous route that many shipping companies are avoiding because of the risks.

The Economist is also saying that the Arctic may be ice free 30 years earlier than previously thought.

[SailOar]

Early Greenland Melt Spike Possible as Forecast Calls for Temperatures of up to 50 F Above Average

...Starting on Wednesday, May 3, a sprawling dome of high pressure is expected to begin to extend westward from the far North Atlantic and out over Iceland. As the high pressure dome builds to 1040 mb over the next couple of days, its clockwise flow will thrust abnormally warm and moist air northward out of the Atlantic. This air-mass is expected first to over-ride eastern Greenland, then run up into Baffin Bay, finally encompassing most of the island and its vast, receding glaciers.

Liquid precipitation is then expected to start falling over southern sections of the Greenland Ice Sheet as temperatures rise to 1-6 C (33 to 43 F) or warmer. Since water contains more latent heat energy than air, such rainfall is likely to produce more melt than would otherwise be caused by a simple temperature rise...

According to climate reanalysis data, by May 5th, temperatures over northern and eastern Greenland are expected to range between 15 C above average over a wide region and between 20 and 28 C above average in the northeast. For the Fahrenheit-minded, that’s 27 to 50 degrees F above normal. Or the equivalent of a 102 F to 125 F May day high in Gaithersburg, MD...

[jackdale]

Shipping routes across the Arctic are going to open up significantly this century even with a best-case reduction in CO2 emissions, a new study suggests.
University of Reading, UK, researchers have investigated how the decline in sea-ice, driven by warmer temperatures, will make the region more accessible.
They find that by 2050, opportunities to transit the Arctic will double for non ice-strengthened vessels.
These open-water ships will even be going right over the top at times.

The study - Sea ice decline and 21st century trans-Arctic shipping routes - Melia - 2016 - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library

• Pink routes are those taken by moderately ice-strengthened vessels
• Blue transits are those available to non-specialised shipping
  

[Dauntlessny]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The crazy thing about sailing the NW Passage is that it is becoming less crazy all the time.

We’re planning to get to Newfoundland this year. Our long-range plans are to make it to the PNW. My partner is saying we should take the NW Passage instead of the Panama route.

The scary thing is, she’s only 1/2 joking.

In hindsight, I should have looked at this option again.
I spent so must time heading south, then west to the PC and now I will spend two summers heading north to the Pacific NW, BC and SE Alaska.

I'm feeling really stupid right now. I was so worried about getting stuck over winter, but now the boat will be "stuck" in Mexico for the winter.

[Dauntlessny]

Originally Posted by SailOar

The Arctic Ocean Is Becoming More Like the Atlantic Ocean | Scientific American

A great deal of attention has been given to how much warmer the Arctic air has become. A new report published in Science suggests that the Arctic Ocean itself is undergoing a huge change.

Well at least half the Arctic Ocean that is.
The article, "Greater role for Atlantic inflows on sea-ice loss in the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean" is just dealing with the Eurasian half of the Arctic.

Which brings up the fact that the Northeast Passage may be much more open to all traffic sooner. This study also points out that the changes seen in various water layers, that first appeared in the western portion (of the Russian/Norwegian side) are now appearing in the eastern area north of Franz Josef Land.

It does seem to indicate the the more trouble free passages will be in the Northeast Passage, if we are only talking about ice that is.

[SailOar]

Cyan - this year
Red - last year
Green - record-setting 2012



Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag

[DeepFrz]

An interesting article in "The Guardian" about the ice jam that trapped fishing boats and tankers trying to supply communities in the north. Because of a warmer climate there is so much ice coming down from the arctic that the ice breaker assigned to a climate study in Hudson's Bay had to be diverted to free the trapped boats. This is happening just north of Newfoundland/Labrador and is due to the thinner ice being much more mobile. I don't think this year would be a good one to try the Northwest Passage route.

[SailOar]

Greenland now a major driver of rising seas | PHYS.org

Ocean levels rose 50 percent faster in 2014 than in 1993, with meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet now supplying 25 percent of total sea level increase compared with just five percent 20 years earlier, researchers reported Monday.

The findings add to growing concern among scientists that the global watermark is climbing more rapidly than forecast only a few years ago, with potentially devastating consequences....

"This result is important because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)"—the UN science advisory body—"makes a very conservative projection of total sea level rise by the end of the century," at 60 to 90 centimetres (24 to 35 inches), said Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Oxford who did not take part in the research.

That estimate, he added, assumes that the rate at which ocean levels rise will remain constant.

"Yet there is convincing evidence—including accelerating losses of mass from Greenland and Antarctica—that the rate is actually increasing, and increasing exponentially." "Most scientists now expect total rise to be well over a metre by the end of the century," Wadhams said.


More information: Xianyao Chen et al. The increasing rate of global mean sea-level rise during 1993–2014, Nature Climate Change (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3325

[topmast]

Spent 5 years running a research north of Tuk so am familiar with the Arctic like it was. Before false news had a name .I wrote stuff to bamboozle the on board scientists... Like this

More than 1400 pingos on the Tuktoyaktuk Penninsula have long been a tourist attaction and a minor curiosity for passing scientists who considered them to be simply upswellings of pure ice in the permafrost. No one considered the real hazard lurking in the lower depth of frozen earth. Before the last ice age a layer of peat and other detritus was laid down and then as the earth was depressed by the formation of ice,algae growing on the ice continued to filter down for eons to form methane hydrate crystals .As the earth depressed further ,the Mackenzie River deposited a layer of sedimentation over the entire area. The deeper deposits formed natural gas and oil but the shallow deposits remained as methane hydrate which is stable at lower tempurature. As the Ice Age ended many methane outgassing eruptions occurred.causing a positive feedback loop as methane is a major contributor to the green house effect. In only ten thousand years most of the ice melted and a new relatively stable climate prevailed. Now ,with man's contribution to global warming, a further warming is occurring and it's only a matter of time before the pingos burst and the methane cloud wipes out the population of Tuktoyaktuk .

[SailOar]

Cyan - this year
Red - last year
Green - record-setting 2012




Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag

[joel383]

Just met a guy from the Netherlands on an aluminum boat called `Tranquilo` here in Seward Alaska that said he's going West to East this year. Forgot his name too...

Edit:looks like he may have done it previously... SOLO!

Edit 2: his name is Bart[emoji1]

[joel383]

Edit 3: Bestevaer 56ST aluminum sloop, center board

[Dauntlessny]

Here is the July 5th, Update
Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag

Looks like a good year to go.

Richard on Dauntless

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Dauntlessny

Here is the July 5th, Update
Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag

Looks like a good year to go.

Richard on Dauntless

Richard thats a good resource for general artic ice conditions.
Here is a link that is more relevant to the NWP specifically
Environment and Climate Change Canada - Weather and Meteorology - Full resolution map

[jackdale]

Global warming melts ice, alters fabled Northwest Passage - ABC News