Greenland lost 2 billion tons of ice this week, which is very unusual

This remarkable Greenland photo highlights extreme Arctic melting

Image : Steffen M. Olsen, courtesy of Mashable

From CNN by Brandon Miller

Over 40% of Greenland experienced melting Thursday, with total ice loss estimated to be more than 2 gigatons (equal to 2 billion tons) on just that day alone.

While Greenland is a big island filled with lots of ice, it is highly unusual for that much ice to be lost in the middle of June.
The average "melt season" for Greenland runs from June to August, with the bulk of the melting occurring in July.

To visualize how much ice that is, imagine filling the National Mall in Washington with enough ice to reach a point in the sky eight times higher than the Washington Monument (to borrow an analogy Meredith Nettles from Columbia University gave to The Washington Post).

Yesterday (13th June), we calculate #Greenland #icesheet lost more than 2 Gt (2 km³) of ice,, melt was widespread but didn't quite get to #SummitCamp which was just below 0°C

The high melt is unusual so early in the season but not unprecedentedhttps://t.co/Ftg0fkC7AK pic.twitter.com/Y4jQ1FoFRZ

— Greenland (@greenlandicesmb) June 14, 2019

The sudden spike in melting "is unusual, but not unprecedented," according to Thomas Mote, a research scientist at the University of Georgia who studies Greenland's climate.
"It is comparable to some spikes we saw in June of 2012," Mote told CNN, referring to the record-setting melt year of 2012 that saw almost the entire ice sheet experience melting for the first time in recorded history.
This much melting this early in the summer could be a bad sign, indicating 2019 could once again set records for the amount of Greenland ice loss.

That doesn’t look right.

Image: NSIDC

Mote explained how snow and ice melt off the Greenland ice sheet, especially early in the season, makes it easier to for additional melt to occur later in the summer.
White snow and ice, which is bright and reflects the sun's rays back into space, reduces the amount of heat that is absorbed and helps to keep the ice sheet cold, a process known as "albedo."
"These melt events result in a changed surface albedo," according to Mote, which will allow more of the mid-summer sun's heat to be absorbed into the ice and melt it.

 courtesy of PolarPortal

Predictions for a record melt season

Mote says "all signs seem to be pointing to a large melt season," and he is far from the only scientist to think so.
Jason Box, an ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, predicted in late May that "2019 will be a big melt year for Greenland."
Box pointed out that this year had unusually early-season melt days in April, and the melt season was "happening about three weeks earlier than average, and earlier than the record-setting melt year of 2012."
In addition to the early-season melt, the snow cover is already lower than average in Western Greenland, and combining these factors means "2019 is likely going to be a very big melt year, and even the potential to exceed the record melt year of 2012."

What is causing the sudden melt?

A persistent weather pattern has been setting the stage for the current spike in melting, according to Mote.
"We've had a blocking ridge that has been anchored over East Greenland throughout much of the spring, which led to some melting activity in April -- and that pattern has persisted."
That high pressure ridge pulls up warm, humid air from the Central Atlantic into portions of Greenland,.which leads to warmer temperatures over the ice.
The high pressure also prevents precipitation from forming and leads to clear, sunny skies.

Over the past week or two, that high pressure ridge got even stronger as another high pressure front moved in from the eastern United States -- the one that caused the prolonged hot and dry period in the Southeast earlier this month.

photo : Christian Streib, CNN

Melt periods such as the current one are not unprecedented; Mote noted previous periods in 2012, 2010 and 2007, all major melt years.
But he pointed out that until recently, they were unheard of.
"We've seen a sequence of these large melt seasons, starting in 2007, that would have been unprecedented earlier in the record," he said.
"We didn't see anything like this prior to the late 1990s.
If these extreme melt seasons are becoming the new normal, it could have significant ramifications around the globe, especially for sea level rise.
"Greenland has been an increasing contributor to global sea level rise over the past two decades," Mote said, "and surface melting and runoff is a large portion of that."

Links :

• CNN : Arctic melt: Threat beneath the ice / Greenland's Ice: A Photographic Eulogy / Melting of Greenland's ice is 'off the charts,' study shows  / Greenland is melting even faster than experts thought, study finds
• WP : Temperatures leap 40 degrees above normal as the Arctic Ocean and Greenland ice see...
• Gizmodo : Half of Greenland's Surface Started Melting This Week, Which Is Not Normal / Greenland Is Now Losing Ice Six Times Faster Than It Was in 1980
• Forbes : Theory, Hypothesis, And Law - Debunking A Climate Change Contrarian Tactic / Greenland Glaciers In Deep Water
• Popular Science : Saving Greenland could save the world
• BBC : The poisons released by melting Arctic ice  / Greenland map captures changing Arctic in fine detail
• ESRI : As Greenland’s Glaciers Melt, Denmark Charts the Changing Waters

A new layer in the GeoGarage platform : Spain nautical charts based on rasterized ENC material from IHM

Nautical charts for Spain until today which leads to the availability of a new dedicated layer for Spain with IHM ENCs :
Spanish raster charts in the GeoGarage platform included with the British Isles & misc. (UKHO) layer
note : with the arrival today of a dedicated and exhaustive layer for Spain, these Admiralty raster charts for Spain will be withdrawn in the next Q3-2019 release of the layer based on UKHO raster material

Until today, the GeoGarage platform used the raster chart material (RNC) provided by UKHO to display nautical charts for the Spanish areas.

Unfortunately, UKHO only integrates about one third (around 100 RNCs) of the original digital nautical maps from IHM (Instituto Hidrografico de la Marina de España) whole catalogue of paper maps (329 in total).

(see last UKHO update in the GeoGarage platform)

For internal management reasons specific to IHM, the Spanish Hydrographic Office can't deliver to their commercial licensees (whose GeoGarage) their own digital raster material (RNC) -with a recurrent periodicity for updates- corresponding to the Spanish nautical paper maps.

The GeoGarage platform was already in the capacity to deliver a rasterized visualization of Electronic Navigation Chart (vector ENC) through their web services (WMS/WMTS) for their customers involved in webmapping and other onshore GIS activities.

Today, the GeoGarage platform is ready to propose the visualization of ENC to their customers using mobile navigation apps (non SOLAS)

 new ENC_ES layer :
Spanish (IHM) ENC coverage in the GeoGarage platform (296 cells)

 view of Ibiza harbor (rasterized ENC overlaid on Google Maps imagery)

So Weather4D R&N users (with updated version 12/06/2019) can right now display the whole catalogue of IHM ENC (296 ENC at this time), with a quarterly updating process : see GeoGarage news

Today, in this first version, the vector ENC are displayed using a graphical rendering similar to the one used in official ECDIS (s-52 IHO specifications) : they are not to be used for shipping navigation (IMO SOLAS), but only for recreative use, not as a primary tool for navigation.

Effectively, in contrast to the use in ECDIS, there is no possibility -today with the W4D current version- to ask for text info and details regarding any navigational objects (beacon, buoy, marks...).

1741 map of the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera)

Ibiza island with Weather4D R&N and AIS targets

 Ibiza harbor chart & AIS targets with Weather4D R&N

Note : to get a yearly subscription to the Spain (IHM) layer on the GeoGarage e-commerce website

(pricing ENC_ES : 25.99 €) for W4D R&N iOS mobile app, go to :

weather4d.geogarage.com

 

1957 Deposito Hidrografico Nautical Chart of Ibiza and Formentera Islands

source Geographicus
 

Links :

• W4D news : 10 reasons to get Weather4D Routing & Navigation today! (new W4D R&N version 12/06/2019)

Sailing from Shetland to the Faroe Islands

by Erik Aanderaa

 Shetland to Faroë with the GeoGarage platform (NHS nautical chart)

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Crossing the North Sea Alone, wintertime

‘The Raft’ Review: A crew of 10 set adrift with a moody svengali

In 1973, five men, six women and a 16mm camera drifted across the Atlantic on a raft as part of anthropologist Santiago Genovés’ unique ‘Acali Experiment’; a sociological study of human aggression and sexuality.

Genovés appointed only women to the positions of power on the craft, believing that the group would soon descend into violent power struggles.

Nobody, including (the questionably sexist) Genovés, expected the events that transpired over the three-month journey.

Archive material, a reunion of surviving expedition members and dramatic recreations on a custom-built replica of the raft allow Lindeen to create a compelling portrait of an idea and era.

His questioning documentary probes the tensions between dogma, experience, memory and emotions, and goes some way to restoring dignity to the ‘survivors’. 
trailer on Vimeo

From NYTimes by A.O. Scott

A fascinating documentary re-examines a notorious anthropological experiment from the 1970s.

There is no collection of human beings too small for conflict, as anyone who has had roommates or endured a family car trip surely knows.

But social science exists to test — and sometimes to affirm — our self-knowledge as a species, which is why 11 people spent the summer of 1973 crossing the Atlantic on a small raft powered only by wind, ocean currents and the ambition of a Mexican anthropologist named Santiago Genovés.

This journey, the subject of a fascinating new documentary called “The Raft,” was not an early exercise in “Real World”-style television, though a film camera was present on board the vessel, silently recording the interactions of the young, international, scantily dressed crew.

Genovés, who designed the Acali (as it was called) and made the crossing with his subjects, was motivated by idealism and curiosity rather than — or perhaps in addition to — prurience.

Crew members aboard the Acali for an experimental trip across the Atlantic in 1973.

In the documentary “The Raft,” participants recount their experience decades later.

Three months without privacy on a raft.

Labelled ‘The Sex Raft’ by tabloids and frowned upon by leading academics and scientists, the experiment led by anthropologist Santiago Genoves in 1973 is an incredible story. 

The story of the strangest social experiment of all times - told by those who took part in it. In 1973, five men and six women sailed across the Atlantic on a raft.

A social experiment and a scientific study of violence, aggression, sex and group behaviour, conducted by a radical Mexican anthropologist.

Everything was filmed and documented in a diary.

But theory is one thing, practice is another.

And without wanting to reveal too much, the experiment didn't exactly work out as planned.

Over 40 years later, Swedish artist and filmmaker Marcus Lindeen brings the crew together again for the first time since the experiment, on a faithful copy of the raft in a film studio, to look back at the three intense months they spent together, isolated and without privacy.

An experiment that in many ways encapsulates the excessive 1970s, and which produced a strange wealth of analogue 'big data' about human relations in the shape of Super 8 footage, statistics and diaries from the journey.

Credit : Fasad/Metrograph Pictures

After surviving an airplane hijacking, he conceived of an experiment that he hoped would reveal whether violence was wired into the human genetic code or whether it arose through social conditions.

In its mixture of high-mindedness, arrogance and dystopian potential, the voyage of the Acali recalls other notorious undertakings of its era, notably Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. In this case, instead of being confined to cells and divided into opposing groups, the subjects were set adrift for three months and encouraged to be as open and free as possible.

News reports emphasized the salacious aspects of “the Love Raft” — spreading rumors of orgies at sea — which were exaggerated, though not entirely alien to Genovés’s plan.

He had selected his 10 companions based partly on their physical attractiveness, and his questionnaires were designed to get them thinking about sex, which he theorized was a source of conflict.

It turned out to be more of a logistical challenge, given the small dimensions of the Acali and the total absence of privacy.

Genovés’s contemporaneous diaries and later reflections — read in voice-over by the actor Daniel Giménez Cacho (“Zama”) — provide one narrative thread in “The Raft.”

If the director, Marcus Lindeen, had followed the usual documentary methods, blending old footage with interviews and maybe a re-enactment or two, he would have accomplished something worthwhile, illuminating a minor chapter in the history of intellectual hubris and casual nudity.

But what he does is something far more interesting.

By setting Genovés’s words in counterpoint with the recollections of seven of the participants who are still alive, he reinterprets the experiment, finding meanings that the scientist missed. (Genovés died in 2013).

More than 40 years after the crossing from the Canary Islands to Mexico, the six women who sailed on the Acali gather aboard a plywood replica built for the film on a soundstage in SwedenTheir reminiscences are thoughtful and emotional — their well-worn faces beautiful, weathered afterimages of the ones we see in the footage from 1973 — and they expose the complicated power dynamics that emerged in the group, as well as an easy camaraderie that challenged Genovés’s hypothesis. 

Lindeen's film about the Acali experiment is a both dramatic and psychologically insightful work, which brings a sensational, but almost unknown story into the present age without losing sight of the nuances of the radical adventure.
Genoves wanted to find the solution to violence and bring about world peace; his method was to assemble of crew of men and women from diverse backgrounds and create a microcosm of the world, but with women in more powerful roles – a climate he hoped would be the perfect storm.

Bringing together survivors from the experiment aboard a reconstructed raft built to proportion in present day, The Raft explores their perceptions of the events of 45 years ago.

With an incredible wealth of filmed footage from the raft, and frank conversations between the living participants, uncomfortable truths emerge and the nature of Genoves’ controversial experiment is reconsidered.

When violence failed to erupt — except for one incident, in which the target was an unlucky shark — he tried to instigate it, a blatant violation of basic ethical standards in social science.

Though he comes across in his own writings as witty and self-aware, the picture that emerges decades later is of a moody, manipulative Svengali, blinded by his ego to what was really happening on the raft.

Before setting sail, Genovés had given the most important jobs to women.

Maria Bjornstam, an officer in the Swedish merchant marine, was the captain.

Edna Reves, who had served in the Israeli Army, was the ship’s doctor. Servane Zanotti was the designated diver.

The other men seem to have accepted this arrangement without complaint, but Genovés had a habit of undermining the women’s authority.

For no good reason, he took away Bjornstam’s command, an act of mutiny that, she dryly points out, is generally punishable by death. Another woman, Fé Seymour, one of two black Acali crew members, recalls his casual racism and misogyny, though some of the others disagree.

Their collective testimony amounts to a feminist critique of Genovés’s methods and assumptions. Toward the end, Seymour argues, movingly and persuasively, that the experiment was a success, but not in the way its architect had intended, and not with results he could recognize.

He was so intent on finding violence and dissension that he failed to read the data on solidarity and problem-solving — on the deeply rooted human potential to be decent — that was right in front of his eyes.

Links :

• WSJ : ‘The Raft’ Review: Navigating a Sea of False Assumptions
• Forbes : 'The Raft' Tells Of Sex, Chaos And Mutiny In A Crazy 1973 'Social ...
• The Guardian : The Raft review – strange tale of a floating human laboratory / Storyville: The Raft review – almost too deliciously ludicrous to be true
• The Telegraph : The Raft review: sexual tension at sea in a Big Brother experiment ... / Reality TV before Love Island: Life as a survivor of the Sex Raft
• Hyperallergic : How a ’70s Anthropological Experiment Turned into the “Sex Raft”
• Jezebel :  In The Raft, 10 Human Guinea Pigs Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real... On a Boat 
• The Hollywood Reporter : 'The Raft': Film Review

Canada (CHS) layer update in the GeoGarage platform

39 nautical raster charts updated

see GeoGarage news