A quarter of glacier ice in West Antarctica is now unstable

Map of satellite data shows how glacier ice thinning has spread deep into Antarctica

From ESA by

By combining 25 years of ESA satellite data, scientists have discovered that warming ocean waters have caused the ice to thin so rapidly that 24% of the glacier ice in West Antarctica is now affected.

A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters describes how the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) used over 800 million measurements of Antarctic ice sheet height recorded by radar altimeter instruments on ESA’s ERS-1, ERS-2, Envisat and CryoSat satellite missions between 1992 and 2017.

The study also used simulations of snowfall over the same period produced by the RACMO regional climate model.
Together, these measurements allow changes in ice-sheet height to be separated into those caused by meteorological events, which affect snow, and those caused by longer-term changes in climate, which affect ice.

Europe's dedicated polar-monitoring Cryosat satellite

has produced its sharpest view yet of the shape of Antarctica.

(ESA:Cryotop/Edinburg Univ)

Velocity of recent ice flow around Antarctica. Thwaites Glacier is one of the smaller purple regions on the left side of this image.

New model finds processes that could help slow loss at some glaciers.

see Slowdown in Antarctic mass loss from solid Earth and sea-level feedbacks

The ice sheet has thinned by up to 122 metres in places, with the most rapid changes occurring in West Antarctica where ocean melting has triggered glacier imbalance.
CPOM Director, Andy Shepherd, explained, “Parts of Antarctica have thinned by extraordinary amounts. So we set out to show how much was down to changes in climate and how much was instead due to weather.”

3D view of Thwaites Glacier’s grounding line migration over 500 years, for old models (green) where the bedrock is rigid, and our new model (red) where the bedrock is elastic.

Note that the ice shelf (floating part of the glacier) has been masked to show the underlying bedrock.

Credit: Eric Larour @JPL/NASA/CalTech

To do this, the team compared measurements of surface-height change with the simulated changes in snowfall.
Where the signal was greater they attributed its origin to glacier imbalance.

They found that fluctuations in snowfall tend to drive small changes in height over large areas for a few years at a time, whereas the most pronounced changes in ice thickness coincide with signals of glacier imbalance that have persisted for decades.

Prof. Shepherd added, “Knowing how much snow has fallen has really helped us to isolate the glacier imbalance within the satellite record.
We can see clearly now that a wave of thinning has spread rapidly across some of Antarctica’s most vulnerable glaciers, and their losses are driving up sea levels around the planet.

 Twaites glacier with the GeoGarage platform (NGA nautical chart)

“After 25 years, the pattern of glacier thinning has spread across 24% of West Antarctica, and its largest ice streams – the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers – are now losing ice five times faster than they were in the 1990s.
“Altogether, ice losses from East and West Antarctica have added 4.6 mm of water to global sea level since 1992.”

ESA’s Marcus Engdahl, noted, “This is a fantastic demonstration of how satellite missions can help us to understand how our planet is changing.
The polar regions are hostile environments and are extremely difficult to access from the ground.
Because of this, the view from space is an essential tool for tracking the effects of climate change.”

Scientific results such as this are key to understanding how our planet works and how natural processes are being affected by climate change – and ice is a hot topic at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, which is currently in full swing in Milan.
This study demonstrates that the changing climate is causing real changes in the far reaches of the Antarctic.

Links :

• PNAS : Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment
• BBC : Antarctic revealed in sharper 3D view / Antarctic instability 'is spreading' /  Climate change: Global sea level rise could be bigger than expected
• The Guardian : ‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica
• Phys : 24% of west Antarctic ice is now unstable : study / 2-metre sea level rise 'plausible' by 2100: study / Antarctica's effect on sea level rise in coming centuries 
• Gizmodo : Sea Level Rise Could Displace Nearly 200 Million This Century If We Don't Change Course
• PRI : This submarine’s historic tour under Thwaites Glacier will help scientists predict sea level rise 
• Inverse : Melting Continental Glaciers Remain a World-Flooding Enigma

Netherlands (NLHO) layer update in the GeoGarage platform

37 nautical raster charts updated

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China's scientists are the new kids on the Arctic block

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo berated China for using its growing Arctic research program as a Trojan horse for its military and commercial goals.

From Wired by Eric Niiler

For nearly a century, the Arctic has been a scientific playground for American, Canadian, and European researchers studying everything from magnetic fields to krill populations, as well as documenting rising temperatures and a changing climate.
But with China increasingly expressing an interest in all things Arctic, a geopolitical storm is brewing.
Traditional boundaries between science, commerce, and the military are melting as fast as the region’s sea ice.

On Monday, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo scolded China for using civilian polar research to further its military and commercial goals, including opening up a new “Polar Silk Road” for trade and shipping.
“China’s words and actions raise doubts about its intentions,” Pompeo said in Rovaniemi, Finland, where the eight members of the Arctic Council are meeting this week.
“Beijing claims to be a near-Arctic state.
Yet the shortest distance between China and the Arctic is 900 miles.”

Pompeo said the US welcomes Chinese investment in the Arctic but that the US needs to “examine these activities closely,” citing a Pentagon report issued last week that found that scientific research could support a strengthened Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean, which could include deploying submarines.

China sees nuclear-powered icebreakers as key to fulfilling its Arctic ambitions.
China's research icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon

Until about a decade ago, China wasn’t known as a polar nation.
In 2013 it became an “observer state” to the eight-member Arctic Council.
And these days it seems that China is trouncing the US when it comes to its presence north of the Arctic Circle.
China opened a research station in Iceland in 2018 to study space weather.
It has another one in Norway’s Svalbard Island, and it signed an agreement last month with Russia for a joint research center to forecast the ice conditions of the Northern Sea Route and provide recommendations for Arctic economic development, according to Russian officials.

Last fall, China launched its second polar icebreaker, dubbed the Xuelong (Snow Dragon) 2, the world’s first to crunch 5-foot-thick ice both forwards and backwards.
It has also commissioned a nuclear-powered icebreaker to be built in the next few years, along with several ice-capable patrol boats.

Meanwhile, the US's lone heavy icebreaker is more than 40 years old and is often in need of repairs.
Congressional funding for a new $746 million icebreaker was diverted to President Trump’s southern border fence last year, while a newly announced icebreaker won’t be ready until 2024.

So what is China doing in the Arctic? Experts and observers of the region say that China has a lot of reasons for wanting to be there.
Its leaders are worried about the effects of climate change, for one.
The Arctic is heating up faster than the rest of the world because of rising greenhouse gas emissions, scientists have warned.
Over the past five years, the region has been warmer than at any time since 1900, when record-keeping began, according to scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
China wants to learn more about connections between a warming Arctic and how that might lead to droughts in China’s mainland, for example, or sea level rise that could swamp its populated coastal cities.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, says Chinese leaders want their scientists to take part in Arctic research because they believe that “climate change impacts the whole world, so China needs to be there.”
That goes against historical precedent, in which the only countries with a permanent presence in the Arctic have been the ones to control territory within the Arctic Circle and generally set up research bases there.
US officials are skeptical that China is only pursuing science because of its history of staking out claims on both commercial fisheries and mineral extraction in far-flung places.
“It is an argument that raises a lot of eyebrows, but that is the Chinese argument."

At the same time it is engaging in legitimate scientific research, Yun says, China is also pursuing a strategy of scientific diplomacy to benefit its commercial resource development goals.
The melting Arctic has also opened a new sea route between China’s factories and European customers.
The first Chinese-built tanker sailed through the ice from Guangzhou, China, to Russia’s Murmansk seaport in January.

A comparison of select major icebreakers of Russia, the United States, and China.

(Malte Humpert)

Because China doesn’t have a claim to the Arctic, unlike the other eight nations of the Arctic Council (the US, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden), that means it must pursue partnerships with countries that do.
That’s how China got its space weather lab—by cooperating with Icelandic officials.

In Greenland, scientists from the Chinese Geological Survey have spent the past few years visiting mineral sites.
In 2017, Chinese officials announced plans for a joint China-Greenland polar research base, as well as a satellite ground station for climate change research.
These scientific partnerships are happening at the same time as China is backing five big mining or development projects in Greenland.

Yun says Chinese scientists don’t see the conflict between scientific research and national goals of resource development.
“When China says that we are studying how climate change affects wildlife in the Arctic, they are also collecting data for temperature change for the flow of the ice, the change of the shipping routes,” Yun says.
She spoke from Shanghai, where she is attending a forum on China in the Arctic this week.
“Is that information going to be used for future commercial activity? I think it certainly will.”

Others say that Western cooperation with China’s scientific projects in the Arctic will benefit both sides.
That’s because scientists usually share information and build trust with each other despite their national or political differences.
“There’s no one-way street in this,” says Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen, a professor of social science at the Arctic University of Norway, in Tromsø.
“We also learn something about China and its actions in the Arctic.
You can be suspicious about scientific collaboration because the Chinese side builds knowledge, but we build knowledge too.”

China and Russia are cooperating in the gas drilling.

Leaders of Nordic nations that border the Arctic tend to have a less confrontational stance than Secretary Pompeo.
In addition to finding fault with China, Pompeo also criticized Russia for malfeasance in the Arctic (and even picked on friendly Canada) at the meeting this week.

One thing Pompeo left out of his speech, however, was any mention of climate change.
He did, however, declare that "America is the world’s leader in caring for the environment," at the same time as US negotiators pressured the Arctic Council to remove any language on global warming from the group’s final resolution.
The group refused, so it won't issue any resolution at all.

Links :

• HighNorthNews : China in Arctic, Releases New Details on Icebreaker
• Maritime Executive : The Arctic Shipping Route No One’s Talking About / The Arctic is America's Next Maritime Frontier
• The Guardian : US warns Beijing's Arctic activity risks creating 'new South China Sea'
• AsiaNews : Research and development: China and Russia on the Arctic Silk Road
• Bloomberg : China Military Expanding Reach Into Arctic Region, Pentagon Says 
• StraitTimes : China's polar ambitions cause anxiety
• BBC : How Greenland could become China's Arctic base  
• The Arctic Institute : Russian Strategic Intentions in the Arctic

Norway (NHS) layer update in the GeoGarage platform

84 nautical raster charts updated & 1 new inset added

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Fyodor Konyukhov completes South Pacific crossing

Russian explorer Fyodor Konyukhov rowed his way through the Pacific ocean & set several world records, including longest solo sailing in the ocean (154 days), biggest distance covered by rowing (11,525 km) while being the oldest solo rowing sailor (67yo)
So far, Fyodor Konyukhov has sailed around the world five time, crossed the Atlantic Ocean 17 times and became the first Russian to complete the Explorers Grand Slam: he climbed the highest mountains on all seven continents and visited the North Pole and the South Pole.
In 2007, Konyukhov circumnavigated the Southern Hemisphere aboard a sailing yacht dubbed the Scarlet Sails when he crossed the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

From Explorerweb by Peter Winsor 

After 154 days, 13 hours and 13 minutes, Fyodor Konyukhov arrived at the Diego Ramirez Islands off Chile to complete the first leg of his Southern Ocean row.

The prolific Russian adventurer left New Zealand in November.

Fyodor Konyukhov began his solo circumnavigation around the world on a rowing boat on December 6, 2018, setting off from the port of Dunedin in New Zealand.

The expedition is divided up into three parts: Dunedin (New Zealand) - Cape Hown (Chile), Cape Horn - Cape Leeuwin (Australia) and Cape Leeuwin - Dunedin.

In total, Konyukhov will have to row 16,000 nautical miles (27,000 km).

Konyukhov’s support team intercepted him on the windward side of the islands in dangerous conditions (40-45 knot winds and 6-7 metre waves).

With the conditions predicted to worsen, his team decided to tow the rowboat into the Drake Passage.

The longitude of the Diego Ramirez Islands is considered the end of an east-west crossing of the South Pacific Ocean, according to the Ocean Rowing Society.

Russian adventurer Fedor Konyukhov, who is currently on his round-the-world voyage aboard a solo rowboat, became the first person in history to cross the southern part of the Pacific Ocean, from New Zealand to Chile, aboard a rowboat, the Ocean Rowing Society International said.

"On May 09, 2019 at approx. 18:00UTC Fedor crossed the finish line of Diego Ramirez Longitude (68.68W) within vicinity of land and with this has officially completed his row across the South Pacific Ocean from west to east," the statement says adding that it took the Russian traveler 154 days 13 hours and 37 minutes to do it.

Konyukhov planned to complete the journey in 120 days but endured several cyclones during his five months in the notorious Roaring Forties.

Fedor Konyukhov in his rowboat AKROS, off the coast of Chile.
The rowing boat dubbed Akros, which the voyageur is sailing to circumnavigate the Southern Hemisphere, was designed specifically for the expedition by British engineer Philip Morrison.

The nine-meter long boat has water-proof compartments for food storage and three independent systems of producing energy: solar modules, wind generators and a chemical power supply station that uses methanol to produce energy.
The boat is also equipped with two types of satellite phones, a satellite tracker and a few duplicate systems of connection and navigation.

Photo: Oscar Konyukhov

He lost more than 100km during one gale.

The second leg of Konyukhov’s 27,000km journey across the Southern Ocean will take him from Cape Horn to Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia later this year.

The final leg, which begins in late 2020, runs from Cape Leeuwin back to Dunedin, New Zealand, where he began.

 The Akros design.

Photo: konyukhov.ru

In 2002, the adventurer set a world record by crossing the Atlantic Ocean solo on a rowboat in 46 days and four hours.

The record remained intact for around 11 years.
In 2013-2014, he finished a solo-rowing non-stop voyage across the Pacific Ocean, reaching the Australian coast after a 159-day adventure.
In 2016, Konyukhov also dared to break a world record and performed a non-stop solo hot air balloon flight around the globe in just 11 days and four hours. He covered over 21,800 miles. 

Links :

• ODT : Rower makes Cape Horn stormy conditions
• Fedor Konyukhov wrote a new page in the history of ocean rowing 
• ExplorerWeb : Fyodor Konyukhov: The World’s Busiest Adventurer Begins His Latest Expedition / Cyclone Pounds Konyukhov on Southern Ocean