Real time reports on the state of the Arctic ice pack as it melts through the summer
The North Pole!
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At approximately 0030 UTC on July 24th we reached the North Pole. The ice here was shattered into Cake and Small pieces, occasionally Medium, with a very roughly 50/50 mixture of old and first year ice. Image below.
This morning at 0930 UTC+1 we arrived at the Geographic North Pole. During the night, north of 89N ice greater than 4m thick was reported but we did not observe this.
At the pole we had 10/10 coverage, of which 9/10+ was multiyear. This was heavily weathered and hummocked genuine multiyear and definitely not 2nd year ice. Thickness was not as great as expected and most was around 150cm thick.
Melt was 2/10, frequently-linked ponds with open tops and no thaw holes.
Interestingly, some of the old ice was very dirty as can been seen in the picture. This appeared to be dust/dirt and not algae, and it was clearly present through most of the thickness of the ice and not just on the surface.
Hi Alex, Thanks for the update! Really useful for us and our analysts to get in-situ observations like this - the conditions around Svalbard have certainly been unusual this year, it will be very interesting to see how this progresses over the next few weeks/months. Best of luck with your activities in the remaining part of the season! Kind regards, Alistair On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 12:51, Penelope Mae Wagner < penelopew@met.no > wrote: ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Alex Cowan < alex.cowan@cantab.net > Date: Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 12:32 PM Subject: New Ice Forming in Svalbard To: alex.polarcollective.northpole < alex.polarcollective.northpole@blogger.com >, Donald K. Perovich < donald.k.perovich@dartmouth.edu >, Jennifer Hutchings < jhutchin@coas.oregonstate.edu >, Penelope Mae Wagner < penelopew@met.no >, Nick Hughes < nick.hughes@met.no >, istjenesten < istjenesten@met.no > Although the Polar Collective team has completed it...
We spent a full day on 4 August at an ice station approximately 3 NM from the pole. We parked just three cables away but drifted south during the night.
We had the same mix of old and first year reported for the day before, but one very notable feature was a soft and creamy white substance that we were unable to identify scattered across the ice (pictured). Found both in ponds and on the ice surface, it occurred in clusters and had melted itself 10+cm downwards into the ice. It appeared biological in origin and had the texture of a cosmetic cream. It could sometimes contain small areas that were yellow/brown in colour.
We had a small team of citizen scientists active on the ice (pictured), collecting melt pond depth profiles for two different ice types -- the measurements will be published here in a few days.
After leaving the ice station we returned to the pole in order to circle it at a distance of 0.7NM, making a world circumnavigation in around 30-45 minutes. In this time ...
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