The Guardian Relocates The North Pole By 500km

"After 73 days, the Catlin Arctic Survey has come to an end. Pen Hadow’s team of British Arctic explorers have battled to the North Pole through freezing conditions collecting data about the ice en route."

 

Er, not quite.

 

1. Due to horrifically cold weather, hypothermia and frostbite, they made it less than half way to the pole.
2. Some of the distance they did travel was due to polar drift.  They reported crossing the 85th parallel “in their sleep.”
3. They started on ice which was already known to be first year ice, yet were “surprised” to find that it was first year ice.
4. They stayed on first year ice for most of the truncated journey.
5. Their ice measurements tell us that the first year ice this year is fairly thick.
6. Their ice measurements tell us very little...about the thickness or “health” of multi-year ice.
7. They will no doubt get an invite to St. James Palace for tea with Prince Charles

 

Full post at Watts Up With That?

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

Twice as thick. And not just the ice!

Tim Blair

History’s most pointless Arctic strolling tour continues. The latest from Christopher Booker:

Up in the Arctic, after yet another delay for bad weather, the hapless Catlin trio, sponsored by an insurance firm which hopes to make money out of alarm over global warming, continue their painful progress towards the distant North Pole, measuring the ice with an old tape measure and assuring Prince Charles by satellite telephone that it is “thinner than expected”.

 

When the Catlin trio heard a passing aircraft, which they hoped was bringing much-needed supplies, they little realised it was a DC-3 carrying an international team of scientists, using the latest electro-magnetic induction equipment to discover rather more efficiently that the ice was in fact “twice as thick” as they had expected.

 

The Catlin trio – not to be confused with the Barb Catlin Trio – have been out there now for 70 days and still aren’t even halfway to their destination. Less ice would make for an easier trip. 

 

A fuller report on the German aerial ice survey here.

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous