Mark Brandon • August 23, 2018 A story on the BBC Business News website about the Northern Sea Route caught my eye: BBC Business News “Container ship to break the ice on Russian Arctic route”. 21 August 2018. The Danish ship Venta Maersk, (Maersk Line, ice-class Baltic feeder vessel of 3,600 containers) is going to attempt to […]
RRS James Clark Ross is on route to Rothera, the largest British Antarctic Survey research Station. In the next few hours to get to the base she will have to pass what looks like a continuous sea ice band about 15 km wide, before she enters some looser pack. To get their she will have […]
Mark Brandon • September 27, 2016 On 26th September 2016 the MODIS sensor on The TERRA satellite captured this beautiful image of South Georgia, with Iceberg A66 drifting past. Iceberg A66 passing South Georgia captured in a MODIS image on the 26 September 2016. The image is available on a KML file on the MODIS […]
Project MIDAS publicised on Friday that a huge iceberg is going to calve from the Larsen C Ice Shelf. This was written up a a great story on the BBC news website Huge Antarctic iceberg poised to break away. I understand a little about this stuff so got drawn into the media around it. Here is […]
Mark Brandon • November 14, 2016 The Prince Gustav Channel was covered by an ice shelf which collapsed in the 1990’s, and for many years it was possible to sail a ship around James Ross Island. Recently it has been covered with sea ice frozen to the land – we call this fast ice, and […]
Mark Brandon • October 26, 2017 As daylight has returned to Antarctica it is straightforward to pick out polynya forming on the edge of the Antarctic continent. This one by the Stange Ice Shelf and Rydberg Peninsula caught my eye. It is a latent heat polynya formed as the winds push the sea ice away […]
Mark Brandon • January 24, 2017 The sea ice around Antarctic is currently still at an historic low. As usual I think it is good to look at a geographic perspective on the sea ice distribution. This is the sea ice concentration 22 January 2017 compared with the 1989-1993 mean on the 22 January. RED shades = less […]
Navigation charts in Antarctica may not be as good as you think. It makes sailing in those regions a little more exciting than you could hope. Here is an example. The coastline of Rothschild Island just to the west of Alexander Island, Antarctica. The navigation chart says the coastline location could be 5 miles in […]
Today is 105 years since Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting and Olav Bjaaland reached the South Pole. And Google have celebrated that fact with a google Doodle: Amundsen expedition South Pole Google Doodle I love the doodle. It’s beautiful art. But it falls on me to be a bit of a bore… The doodle […]
Mark Brandon • March 7, 2017 The polynya I saw forming in early February is still clear, and very large in the Southern Weddell Sea. At the moment it is more than than 80,000 km2, although there is clearly a lot of young sea ice covering a large part of the polynya. The Weddell Sea 5 […]
I thought it was time to look at the sea ice data as the summer Arctic melt proceeds. The image below shows the mean sea ice extent 1989-93 on 22 July, the sea ice extent 22 July 2017, and the difference between the two data sets. Reds imply less sea ice than the mean 1989-93, […]
Mark Brandon • August 23, 2018 A story on the BBC Business News website about the Northern Sea Route caught my eye: BBC Business News “Container ship to break the ice on Russian Arctic route”. 21 August 2018. The Danish ship Venta Maersk, (Maersk Line, ice-class Baltic feeder vessel of 3,600 containers) is going to attempt to […]
Project MIDAS shows us that the iceberg A68 is about one trillion tonnes. This is the Antarctic Peninsula and the outline of A68 from the satellite image on 14 July 2017 shown in black. The ice front is from the Bedmap2 data set (so a little out of date), and the bathymetry from the IBCSO data […]
Approaching the middle of May and well into the Arctic sea ice retreat we can see that the sea ice extent (area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice) is still well below the mean over the satellite record. Arctic sea ice extent to 53 May 2017 from NSIDC. I like a geographic perspective, […]