Impassable Northwest Passage Open For First Time In History

An anonymous reader writes "The Northwest Passage, a normally ice-locked shortcut between Europe and Asia, is now passable for the first time in recorded history reports the European Space Agency. Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said in the article: 'We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq km per year on average, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is extreme.'"

Roald Amundsen

[imaginaryelf]

The Northwest passage was first traversed in 1903 by that famous Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. This was no small feat given the technology available at the turn of the century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen [wikipedia.org]

Holy Hyperbole

[wdr1]

...is now passable for the first time in recorded history...

Wherein "recorded history" is 30 years?

Shit, all this time I was hoping someone else was making backups of recorded history. Guess not.

-Bill

Arctic minimum, antarctic maximum

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ [uiuc.edu] for the details.
Swings and roundabouts.

Re:A non-passable passage?

[PopeJM]

If its never been passable before why was it called a passage?

The early European explorers and their governments knew the importance of being the first one to find a Northwest passage if one existed. They didn't know for sure if one did exist. It's like talking about a Western route to the Indies when there isn't a direct path from Europe.

Re:A non-passable passage?

[Romancer]

Here: http://www.marine.fm/en/NWP1.htm [marine.fm]

Not too sure if it's the same exact route but it's been traveled as far back as 1903.

Years of Study: ~30

[WED Fan]

Well, considering the years of study of the Northwest Passage are in the 30's, I'm sure someone will get a little hyperbolic with their rhetoric.

You need to get your fact correct

[Anonymous Coward]

The blue is growing. White is neutral. All else is shrinking. Notice the LARGE amount of Brown. [wikipedia.org] Just out of curiosity, what has been CLAIMED to be shrinking, but is growing? And do you have some real links, say science mag?

As to you saying that there is little cause for alarm, I would like some links from those in the know. Or are you just BSing like many others here?

Re:Misleading info on Polar Bears

[MBraynard]

Yes, and if you read it, you will see that since the 1970s the population has risen from 5k to 25k. This during a period of alleged global warming. Their numbers are not in decline.

it's 1550 AD in your alternate universe?

[rubycodez]

Explorers looked for northwest passage from 1400s to 1900, mapping the artic area. in 1906 Roald Amunsen navigated the passage in an ice-fortified ship. Been done with other such ships since then.

By years of study in the 30s

[benhocking]

Are you referring to the 1530s and Hernán Cortés? You're jumping the gun a little — it wasn't until 1576 that Martin Frobisher first tried to find the Northwest Passage. Of course, you could be referring to the 1630s as several attempts were made after this to find this passage that did not exist. Perhaps (but surely not) you're conflating the (prior lack of) existence of the Northwest Passage with the satellite record — which only stretches back about 30 years or so. Still, we know that the Northwest Passage has not been passable for well over 400 years.

Now, sarcasm aside, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't agree with the scientific consensus on global warming. You no doubt extol the virtues of having an open mind and being skeptical. Has it occurred to you that the scientists are just as likely to have underestimated our impact as to overestimated it? In fact, evidence suggests that, being the conservative people that scientists are (not in the political sense, mind you), scientists have repeatedly underestimated our impacts. That doesn't mean that certain non-scientists aren't greatly exaggerating things, but I'm guessing (again) that it's the mainstream science [wikipedia.org] view that you're taking umbrage with.

Re:Poorly worded

[cdrpsab]

The answer is also poorly worded. It's the Great Circle, not the grand circle.

Re:Won't be long

[Anonymous Coward]

Latest Story in the RSS FEED:
How to Stop Commerial Use of Copyleft Materials?
--Saturday September 15, @07:29AM

Latest Story on the Frontpage:
Impassable Northwest Passage Open For First Time In History
--Saturday September 15, @07:05PM

12 stories between them. 12 hours.

Try 400 years

[benhocking]

The first attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage happened well over 400 years ago (did your school not teach this in history class?), and several attempts have been made since then. This is the first time that it's been open as far as we know — and not for a lack of looking for it. I love the uncertainty and doubt, though — perhaps you can find some fear now?

Yeah, look at the comment after yours

[benhocking]

That puts it in perspective. Read up on Roald Amundsen's trip [wikipedia.org] — that will help you get some perspective.

Good grief

[benhocking]

Read the story [framheim.com]. It wasn't just a matter of different technology. The passage didn't exist — he forced his way through.

No, recorded history is over 400 years here

[benhocking]

Try reading up on the history of the Northwest Passage. Sure, we've only had a complete meter by meter map for 30ish years, but we've known about the lack of a Northwest Passage for centuries.

Re:Not quite the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Six months to cross the Atlantic in 1903?!!!

In 1900 it took about a week. In fact, the record for a passenger steamer i 1900 was 5 days and 7 hours (The Hamburg American liner Deutschland)... Not six months...

Heck, it only took Christopher Columbus five weeks to cross the Atlantic in 1492!!!

Re:Misleading info on Polar Bears

[FailedTheTuringTest]

It's true that the population of polar bears has increased in the past 30 years -- but as the article points out, the pack ice has been pretty reliable for those 30 years, too. The bears weren't particularly bothered as the average ice thickness decreased [grida.no] from 3.1 metres in the 1960s and 70s to 1.8 metres in the 1990s. They were still able to go out on the ice and hunt. But the ice has continued to get thinner, and now it is disappearing altogether for parts of the year. For the past 30 years that you speak of, the bears were able to hunt and increase their numbers, but *now* they face a real problem. So people are concerned, not for what happened in the past 30 years, but what will happen in the *next* 30 as their former hunting grounds disappear.

If the ice melts and there's nobody on the beach

[fm6]

Actually, there's a lot of evidence (ice core samples and such) that the arctic hasn't been warm enough for a passage to form for at least 100,000 years.

The scary thing is that losing the polar ice cap has effects way beyond creating a new shipping route. All that ice reflects a lot of heat back into space. It's one of many effects (methane outgassing from melting Siberian tundra; carbon released when drought causes forests to burn) that create a positive feedback look in the global warming trend. In theory, these feedback loops could get so severe they won't stop until the oceans boil. OK, that's pretty unlikely. But it wouldn't have to be nearly so severe an effect to do something relatively minor, but quite nasty. Like wipe out our food supply.

In other words, it's a mistake to phrase the global warming debate in terms of compelling evidence. We can't know for sure — and that should make us more scared, not less. To quote Dirty Harry: You have to ask yourself if you're feeling lucky. Well, do you, punk?

The polar cap in the south pole is getting bigger

[suemeto]

Apparently, the south polar ice cap is the largest it's ever been since 1979, don't hear much about that. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/a_new_record_for_antartic_total_ice_extent [icecap.us]

Re:Poorly worded

[c6gunner]

I tried to moderate your comment "funny" but my mod points seemes to have disappeared between the time I loaded this article, and the time I hit "moderate".

Anyway: the Canadian claim on the arctic territories was never really accepted by most nations. It was simply never disputed because nobody gave a about who owned a bunch of frozen islands in the far north. Now that the ice is melting, EVERYONE is starting to care, and we Canadians, thanks to years of neglect, don't have any way of enforcing our claim. It's all well and good to say "we own this place, now pay us for going through!", but it takes the credible threat of force to be able to enforce such a statement. Don't expect anyone to take our claim seriously.

Yes, I did notice that

[benhocking]

Did you happen to notice that one of those attempts was successful in 1903?

And I've commented on it elsewhere on this thread. That trip took 3 years — there was no passage for him to travel through.

My point is that when people see a headline about the first time "in history," they aren't thinking 30 years, they are thinking 3000 years. But 30 years is all we have any good data about at all.

No, we have good data for 400 years. We have outstanding data for 30 years. And of course, whenever you say "for at least the last 400 years", some smart-alec will infer that it was open 401 years ago.

The fact that previous attempts failed does not mean that the passage did not exist previously, there are many plausible explanations, such as: (1) they went at the wrong time of year

Do you think they thought that winter would be better?

(2) they went the wrong year

Possibly. I'll bet you good money this passage will be open again several times in the next decade. I'd actually wager 2:1 odds that it'll be open next year.

(3) they couldn't find/navigate the route

It'd be hard to miss the current route, though.

You accuse me of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. But it's hard to buy into this global warming hysteria (I believe some of the claims, it's just the hysteria that I don't buy) when publishers continue to sensationalize headlines.

Actually, I did not accuse you of fear. Yes, publishers sensationalize headlines. That's why it's good to go to the source.

Then you come along and pretend that a few explorers going there on a few occasions proves something about the existence over a long period of time.

We're not just talking about a few explorers, we're talking about dozens, probably hundreds. There are only a few famous ones, of course.

There is simply no good data about that general area to support the claim that it was impassible for 400 years straight until 2007; and there's certainly no good data to support the claim that it was impassible for the thousands of years straight until 2007. I know the article didn't make that claim directly, but that's what someone reading the headline is lead to believe, so it is deceptive even if it might not be technically dishonest.

Actually, there is data going back thousands of years in the form of ice cores — or there used to be. Of course, these haven't been done along the entire passage, so it's easy to manufacture uncertainty and doubt in there, but you have to be a true believer to believe that it's ever been like it is now in the last several thousand years. I know you don't believe me, but do you think it's possible you'll be a little less skeptical next year if the Northwest Passage is open again? What if it opens up on an annual basis? Will you then acknowledge that this is at least unprecedented in the last 400+ years?

My problem is that I have a good memory. I remember people 20 years ago saying wait 20 years and then we'll see. Now you have people saying, wait 20 years and then we'll see. For some reason, I suspect you'll still have some people saying that 20 years hence, when the arctic sea ice is mostly gone (in the summer).

Slightly misunderstanding the story

[benhocking]

He didn't sail it in 1905, he traversed it (through various means) between 1903 and 1905. It was not an open passage, however.

And that the Vikings were sailing it sometime between 1200 and 1500 A.D.

Now that's a new one! Do you mean they reached Newfoundland (not news, I think most historians believe this) or that there's "evidence" that they traversed the NW Passage to Asia? If the latter, I'd suggest you use your skeptics eye with respect to that "evidence".

"Mediterranean hit by iceberg!"

[Scrameustache]

I'm sure that the global warming hysteria will try to make this look like a bad thing, but it's a real boon to nautical industries like shipping and such. There just aren't that many ways around continents. Having an extra option is great.

The Exxon Valdez supertanker was towed to San Diego, arriving on July 10 and repairs began in July 30, 1989. Approximately 1,600 tons of steel were removed and replaced. In June 1990 the tanker, renamed SeaRiver Mediterranean, left harbor after $30 million of repairs. She has since been renamed Mediterranean, and is still sailing as of August 2007. The vessel is current owned by SeaRiver Maritime, a privately held subsidiary wholly owned by ExxonMobil

Re:If the ice melts and there's nobody on the beac

[E++99]

Actually, there's a lot of evidence (ice core samples and such) that the arctic hasn't been warm enough for a passage to form for at least 100,000 years.

What specific ice core data suggests that the passage wasn't open in the Medieval Warm Period?

In theory, these feedback loops could get so severe they won't stop until the oceans boil. OK, that's pretty unlikely. ....We can't know for sure -- and that should make us more scared, not less.

It's no mystery. It was a whole lot warmer in the last interglacial, 120kya, than any serious predictions for this one. The significantly warmer temps of the last interglacial are not in dispute. No "runaway global warming" ensued. Rather, an Ice Age ensued, just like after all the other interglacials.

Not the first

[algoa456]

A ship sailed from Vancouver to Halifax via the Northwest passage in 1940. The ship was called the St Roch. It was captained by Henry Larsen. The achievement was overshadowed by the start of WWII. Larsen made a return trip in 1944.

4,000 perhaps, but I said 400

[benhocking]

It says very specifically it's been noted in 30 years.

It does say that, and then it also talks about history. Specifically:

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage - a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.

The "long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable" is not referring to the last 30 years.

No assertion is made that the Northwest Passage has been closed for the entirety of the last 4,000 years.

The assertion is that, every time someone has checked in the last 400+ years, it's been closed. Sure, it hasn't been monitored continuously, but you'd think that during unusually warm summers someone would have thought to check it out since it would save so much time (and money) off of certain trips. Money can be a very strong motivator.

Re:By years of study in the 30s

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Also, A quick google shows that Roald Amundsen sailed it in 1905? Or am I misunderstanding the story?

You are misunderstanding, TFA you linked to said he spent two winters with dogsleds traversing the NW passage. Kinda the opposite meaning of what you implied. Or as you said, "...by making clearly untrue statements, fuel is given to those that are skeptical."

Re:If the ice melts and there's nobody on the beac

[TapeCutter]

"It was a whole lot warmer in the last interglacial, 120kya...balh, blah, blah"

It's not the temprature itself that people are concerned about (go back 250MYA and CO2 concentrations were 4X what they are now and the planet was 10C warmer. It's the unprecedented rate of change that is "unatural" and a "clear and present danger".

The melting of the North pole was predicted and it is now undeniably occuring, one of the predicted "flow on effects" of an ice free Artic ocean is desertification of midwest US ( modern humanity's "breadbasket"). Perhaps you would be happy to return to foraging for grubs and shellfish or hearding goats in an arid wasteland (re: middle east), me - I'm kinda fond of the idea of growing our staple diet in a predictable and sustainable manner. If you think discussing the possiblity of a global famine is hyperbowl then take a good look at what is happening to SE Australia (where I happen to live), if you prefer history then take a look at the "dustbowl" years in the US or the many cases where ancient civilizations crumbled due to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Not to mention global fisheries have been collapsing like dominoes since the 1980's....opps - I just did.

Currently the Artic is predicted to be ice free in 40-50yrs so (according to predictions) the US still has a while before it "dries up", but this year's data (to quote TFA) was "extreme". I have no idea what a 25% reduction from last years record low does to the statistical trend or the predictions of when (no longer "if") the Artic will become ice free in the summer. However using the figures from TFA, if the next three years are as "extreme" as this one then the ice will have receded into oblivion before kyoto even comes up for renewal in 2012.

"It's no mystery."

It is a huge mystery but it's not a total mystery thanks to thousands of scientists who have been very actively working on the broarder question of the "dynamic stablity" of the biosphere in general and climate in particular. Thanks to this large but much maligned group of boffins there have been huge strides in our knowledge over the last three decades (including the sources for your "facts"). Yet when the consensus predictions of these "grant seeking leaches" start occuring in front of our very eyes at a much more alarming rate there are still those who will brush it all aside with some self-serving babble about our distant ancestors who had not even developed language let alone a global econmy and infrastructure that is TOTALLY dependent on the predictability of annual weather patterns (ie:climate). Arguing about the exact definition of an "open" as it pertains to the N.W. passage is the preverbial arranging of deck chairs.

Disclaimer: Sorry to pick on you personally, please take it as a general comment about the level of anthropogenic arrogance on slashdot regarding AGW.

Re:Cooler! (eh, ok, perhaps *warmer*...)

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Am an ...

I swear /. does some weird things to my posts sometimes after I hit Submit! That was supposed to read "I am". Oh well.

Re:The polar cap in the south pole is getting bigg

[RedWizzard]

If you go to the source [uiuc.edu], you can compare the southern [uiuc.edu] and northern [uiuc.edu] anomolies. Those graphs show that while the antarctic ice coverage is about 1.25 million square kms higher than the 1979-2000 mean, the artic ice coverage is over 2 million square kms lower than the 1979-2000 mean. The antarctic increase is not making up for the artic decrease: there is a net loss of ice worldwide. This data points to higher average temperatures and more extreme seasonal variations. Neither of those are good news.

Re:Huh.

[OriginalArlen]

Hey, why not ask a climatologist [nasa.gov] (or six)? That's an excellent paper. If you've heard the "skeptic" canard along the lines of "but the temperature in teh historical proxy records starts rising before the CO2 starts to increase" -- which is completely correct - please take the trouble to read and understand the description of the albedo-flip feedback cycle. That's right, this means that things are much worse than the IPCC thinks.

No, wait, he's a crank. He works for that hotbed of liberal tree-huggers, NASA!

Here's the National Snow and Ice Data Center's latest map of Arctic sea-ice extent [nsidc.org] (w/e 10th September 2007), showing the average extent from 1980-2000 at this time of year. (context and the latest data will be here tomorrow. [nsidc.org].) This will be updating tomorrow (Monday) afternoon with the latest week's data. Normally sea-ice reaches it's minimum extent at the end of September, so we're not at the bottom of the 2007 season yet.

Final one for the depressingly high number of skeptic loonies and ignoramuses who always come out of the wordwork on these stories: are you really saying that George Bush and Arnold Schwartzenegger are both suckers who have fallen for bad silence peddled by some sort of environmentalist illuminati? really? Cos even Dubya has now officially accepted the basic, uncontroversial amongst actual scientists, IPCC-version models are accurate (and this is anthropogenic warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions). You did know that didn't you?

What do you know, that Dubya doesn't?

Yes, I do

[benhocking]

Do you really think it is paranoia Ashlie?

Yes, yes I do. I made a lot of posts on a topic that I care about and know a bit about. That they might be disproportionately directed to you could be because you meet the criteria of being (a) wrong about quite a bit, but (b) not loony wrong. (I tend not to waste my time with true crazies.)

But since I would have to Google for "global warming y2k bug" to find the articles, I will just leave it up to you to do so.

Well, since it wasn't a y2k bug, I would think such a search technique would bias one towards inaccurate articles. You probably consider a site run by climatologists to be "left-wing", but in case I'm wrong, read what Real Climate has to say about it [realclimate.org]. I really don't want to read a bunch of misinformed blogs, but if you can find something from someone who actually knows what they're talking about, I'd be happy to read it. Ah, here's something from junkscience [junkscience.com], which is much less accurate than realclimate, but at least you can't accuse of having a left-wing bias:

Canadian and amateur climate researcher Stephen McIntyre discovered that NASA made a technical error in standardizing the weather air temperature data post-2000. These temperature mistakes were only for the U.S.; their net effect was to lower the average temperature reading from 2000-2006 by 0.15C.

Or do you mean since many left wing think tanks decided they could push their rejected agendas by placing fear into the lives or people based around something that without errors would never have been plausible in the first place.

Do you consider the journals Science, Antarctic Science, Climate Dynamics, Journal of Physical Oceanography, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, Annals of Glaciology, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, and Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics to be left-wing?

And if you think Fox news is right wing, then I guess you are more left then I originally thought.Fox news isn't right wing. The shows they have might be but the station, news, and channel itself isn't. But how would you know that, your probably just parroting what other agenda pushing liberals have told you.

Actually, I know this from original research. See, I have many right-wing relatives, and when I stay with them I'm often subjected to copious amounts of Fox "News". It's not only right-wing — it's frequently wrong (even when compared to more accurate, openly right-wing news sources).

In the US, we still don't have corrected numbers...

Then what did NASA post on their web-site when they claimed to be posting the corrected numbers?

As many people know, cycles in earth often take longer then 40 years.

Sure, and on top of those cycles is man-made contributions to global warming. Keep in mind that the same people who were saying that 20 years ago were predicting that it'd be cooler now than it was then. So, unless you think that the 25% sea-ice loss is part of some conspiracy just to back up some fraudulent numbers for global means (which themselves are backed up by satellite data)...

Re:Meh

[Eiron]

Maybe being vitriolic is the same as being right, but I don't feel like getting all emotional about global economics today. But kudos for your apt boiler metaphor. It doesn't have any logical symbolism for anything actually happening, but kudos, none the less.
 
Let me lay it down for you:
1. Established economy countries (re: USA) are giving growing economy countries (re: China) many, many industrial contracts, and thus lots of money. They are doing this because even though it is lots of money, it is less than the cost of doing things in-house. What a growing economy needs to grow is lots of money. By sending this industry to these growing economies, we accelerate their growth. Eventually, all economies will be established, and then this practice will dissapear.
2. Although it may be that specialization is no longer as important as scale increases, the fact is that many countries lack certain natural resources, such as iron or gold, and must therefore trade for them. Should there be artificial limits placed on what people are allowed to import so some pompous ass can feel satisfied that all these individual countries are sustainable, even though some live in filthy hovels as a direct result of it? Maybe we should force them to form bigger countries. It would take a lot of war, but I guess it would be worth it, right?
3. The evil corporate overlord worldwide plutocracy is a straw man. There is no reason to assume that they would be a result of globalization. The long term result of globalization would see that more efficient, agile, locally run companies and corporations would tend to outperform their unwieldy international counterparts as soon as the wage disparity between nations narrows; there is no reason to go overseas if you can't get cheap labor there, and it increases costs. The reason to import products will be personal choice regarding engineering and design decisions, better prices due to manufacturing differences, or because something won't grow or otherwise can't be found where you live.
4. Fossil fuels, as freely traded commodities are, by definition, not undervalued. Yes, they will run out, they are already trending towards scarcity. As this happens, the value of alternative energy sources will rise, and research and development of said alternatives will increase. Plastics can already be made from corn, and hydrogen could prove to be an efficient storage and transfer medium for nuclear power, which although not sustainable, could probably see us through a few hundred years. There is no crisis there.
5. . . Human costs. Maybe if Nike didn't give some Indonesians crappy jobs manufacturing shoes thier lives would be better. If so, I don't see how. I suppose Nike could cut their advertising budget in half and improve wages, but as I understand it Indonesia is setting a cap on how much they can pay their workers anyway. So, somehow, by Nike being forced to fire all these people and move their factories back to the US, these Indonesians are going to have better lives? Without foriegn money being poured in, their economy is going to grow just as fast as it is now, or maybe faster? I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it seems pretty unlikely, and I certainly don't see how it would work.
6. Autonomy. If we simply get out of the way, stop encouraging or discouraging globalization, things go my way. If we run into the situation with spools of red tape and political diatribes things become a mess, and never actually get to the way I think you want them to be. If there was a clear advantage to your . . . whatever it is you actually want to do, it might be worth thinking about. (how do we increase the wealth of other nations as well as lowering the human cost?) I do not pretend what we have is perfect, but we may be doing the best we can with the situation we have been handed. Without knowing what it is you actually propose we do, I can't say that with any assurity.
7. Melting ice caps is a change, but who is to say whether or not it is a problem. For every displaced Eskimo there may be a dozen better fed Chinese. Time will tell.

Re:it's 1550 AD in your alternate universe?

[at_18]

Explorers looked for northwest passage from 1400s to 1900

And didn't found it.

in 1906 Roald Amunsen navigated the passage in an ice-fortified ship

Funny that it took him two years [wikipedia.org] (mostly spent with his ship blocked by ice) and several dogsleds. That's not my idea of "passage".