USCGC Healy has entered

As Lodger/Artful Dodger has just informed us, USCGC Healy, the US Coast Guard's newest and most technologically advanced polar icebreaker that is designed to conduct a wide range of research activities has entered the ice pack in the Beaufort Sea. Here are the first pictures:

 

 

These images are updated every hour here.This is the ship's location:

 

For regular updates, read these entries by Public Affairs Officer ENS Emily Kehrt.

And of course there's the blog by Dr. Kevin Arrigo, a Professor in the Department of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University. He is the Chief Scientist for NASA’s ICESCAPE (Impact of Climate change on the Eco-Systems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment) mission this summer onboard U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy. Read his blog entries if you want to get a feel for what scientists have been doing in the Arctic this summer.

Update: based on the data in this latest web cam image I have estimated Healy's position (August 9th).

Comments

[Artful Dodger]

Anu has deduced Healy's planned route through the pack (Thanks, Anu!)

[Phil263]

AD

If I look at the Healy's position and the Uni Bremen Map, it is now located in a blue area ( i.e open water). However, the picture above shows that the area is pretty iced up , I would say more than 50 % concentration by the look of it.
I tried to follow your exchange with Siili on another thread about this issue, but I must admit that you lost me. So my question is what sort of reliance can an unsophisticated outsider like myself place in maps such as those published by Uni Bremen or CT ?

[Artful Dodger]

Hi Phil,

What I do is read the Lat./Long. coordinates off the top of the Healy's AloftCam picture, and then locate it on the full resolution Uni-Hamburg sea ice concentration map, here:

ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/NEAR_REAL_TIME/Arc_latest_large.png

[Artful Dodger]

There is also a ship tracker page for Healy, here:

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP

This page tends to have about a 2 hours lag, but you can zoom in/out on the map, and see a full WX history table at the bottom of the page (I especially track the water temps).

If anyone has a better ship tracking page, please share it with the group!

[siili]

I'll add my 2 cents to this very important and deep question. First, if you want an even higher resolution than Lodgers exampel, try http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/NP-37_visual.png , it is a bit old now, but usually updates in about 16 UT.

First if you look at the colourbar at the bottom of the map you'll notice that different shades of blue go all the way from 0% (not 15%) up to 50%, then different shades of gray between 50 % 100%.

So a dark blue colour, like in the small passage which is the one i'm suspecting Healy is using is an obvious choise to a captain who wants a so smooth operation as possible to do good sonic scans of the seabed which is Healys mission.

When they go deeper into the ice the'll work together with another icebreaker, where one makes way for the other which gets a smooth ride through the freashly broken path.

Different detectors/reduction alghoritms have different sensitivity to the lowest iceconcentraitons, the one the Germas both Hamburg and Bremen use i think has been noted to miss this compared to more concervative methods, which instead can have less detail.

Healy has also much better information than we, since they have ordered special coverage by SAR satellites with km resolution and good sensitivity.

[Artful Dodger]

Neven, after the Healy has a track history that spans one day on an Ice Map, let's create a clickable imagemap in html to link to AloftCam hourly pictures (of course, you probably already had this in mind, Wot? ;^)

[Neven]

of course, you probably already had this in mind,

Now I do! My mind is a bit of a blank due to sleep deprivation and making more than a million key strokes per month.

[Artful Dodger]

I wonder if this is what primary school teachers do to relax during the summer ;^)

[siili]

Good idea Lodger, but let's not overburden Neven before the end of the season ;-)

To continue the classic Saga of Healys travels in 1 hour at 6.5knots they got from this: http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/reports/aloftcon/2010/20100808-1201.jpeg to this: http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/reports/aloftcon/2010/20100808-1301.jpeg

that i would like to follow on a map! There is everything there for any possible opinion about the state of the arctic, detectors mapmaking whatever. Meltpools, leads, rotten ice, take your pick!

[Artful Dodger]

Neven, Uni-Hamburg's afternoon updated Sea Ice conc. map is out, here:
ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/NEAR_REAL_TIME/201008/Central_Arctic/20100808.png

[siili]

Sorry to bother you with not very intelligent questions, but is not this map awfully like yesterdays data? When i compare to Bremens version from very early this morning it looks faily the same. When Bremen gives their preliminary version in 1,5h, everything is based on todays data. What am i missing?

[Neven]

Sorry to bother you with not very intelligent questions,

Don't worry, you're in good company. I'm one of the experts in not very intelligent questions. I make a habit of asking one at least once a day. It comes very naturally.

[Artful Dodger]

Hugely different. Just blink compare this image with previous day's in the same FTP folder...

[logicman]

I already posted this in another thread - now well buried.

(stage whisper) - Neven is becoming as prolific as me. ;-)

http://www.icefloe.net/cruisetrack.html

Enjoy!

You zoom the focus in
you zoom the focus out
in, out, in, out, wave the mouse about,
you do the hokey -cokey
and you turn about,
and that's what it's all about.

Old classic Cockney song paraphrased by old classic son of a Cockney. :-)

[Neven]

Lodger is bound to like your little ding dong.

[siili]

With Nevens support, i'll go out on a lim getting even stupider. Yes i agree.

Refrase: why is the hugely different Hamburg map of yesterday uncanningly like Bremens of the day before yesterday?

[Artful Dodger]

... but not your Hampton Wick!

[siili]

Getting cockey are we? Either it was an extremely uneventfull day in the arctic, or we have a serious defecit of pink clouds! What happend to all your wind and stuff?

[logicman]

"What happend to all your wind and stuff?"

I took the medicine. It worked fine! :-)

siili: I've found time to check a few images of different cloud types and false colors. It looks to me that ice is red, and any cloud overlay will change the color seen. The thinnest, purest, whitest clouds will give the prettiest pink. (That's humor - I'm over 6ft tall and 100% cojones-working macho!)

Anyway, as I was saying, the prettiest pink suggests the cleanest clouds, and those are the ones most likely to have formed locally from melting ice. I base that on the idea that the further clouds travel, the more chances they have to pick up pollution such as that nasty smoke, which will change the color.

Thin, clean, recently-formed, white clouds airbrushed by nature over reasonably compact rich red ice = pretty pink.

Footnote: feel free to ignore the silly humor. It's my way of relaxing. The color is, of course, more correctly described as #FFC0CB. :-)

[siili]

You look pretty in pink, how could a humble unworthy ignore a man with a personal iceisland, respect hombre! I only know a man with an own asteroid, but i have met men with own galaxies.

[Greg Wellman]

The main Bremen map has, at the moment, some pretty funny artifacts in the form of ice where there is certainly no ice. E.g. southern lake Michigan, the gulf of Bothnia, and a strip of (imaginary) high concentration off Labrador. Also a bit on the southern tip of Greenland.

Just a reminder that the raw in-the-moment images need human correction.

[logicman]

"Just a reminder that the raw in-the-moment images need human correction."

Sssh! Don't tell everybody!

That's how I got priority of discovery of the Petermann 2010 ice island. ;-)

[Anu]

Hey, did you know the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy is in the Department of Homeland Security ? Are they fighting Climate Change now ?
http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgchealy/

Here's the types of computer screens used onboard the Healy:
http://ilab.ldeo.columbia.edu/plone/healy/papers-and-publications/agu2007-real-time-poster-r0.pdf
I don't see any PIPS 2.0 screens...

The Healy is underway for Arctic West Summer (AWS) 2010 - here's some updates for family and friends of the crew of the Healy, and also some links like "Media and Links" that might be of interest:
http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcHealy/aws10/

[logicman]

The main purpose of the current trips is to verify national boundaries according to international law. This is done partly by taking soundings, which is why the data on salinity and the speed of sound is important.

The climate science is just the cherry on the cake as far as funding is concerned.

[Anu]

Whoops, just realized I gave two of the exact same links that Neven gave, above.

I'll just watch this now - "Icebreaker Healy: Tour a Lab on the Sea "
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7454844

Lodger - that's where I'd go... :-)

[siili]

A slight detour to the Amundsen perhaps? http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=CGDT He is meandering his way through the NWP, in Franklin straight soon, and although he has no mastcam, seatemperatures are taken, and they are consistently arround 4 degrees centigrade.

Is that normal in this stage of the season, with so much ice left?

[Phil263]

I note a sharp contrast between the water and air temperature in NWP ( 4-5 degrees) and the Beaufort Sea where USCGS Healy is (-1.8 degree). The temperature in that part of the Beaufort is still around sea water freezing point. No chance to see much melting happening there in these conditions!

[Anu]

the Beaufort Sea where USCGS Healy is (-1.8 degree). The temperature in that part of the Beaufort is still around sea water freezing point. No chance to see much melting happening there in these conditions!

Where are you getting your information ?
This site shows the Healy currently is in water with a Sea Surface Temperature of 8.884°C:
http://www.icefloe.net/cruisetrack.html
which agrees with:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/satellite/plots/satsst.arc.d-00.png

There's plenty of melting happening in the Beaufort and in the Arctic Basin north of there:
ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/NEAR_REAL_TIME/Arc_latest_large.png

Huge swaths of sea ice will go the way of the ice in the Greenland Sea - the low concentration sea ice just runs out of thickness one day. The water right next to melting ice is the temperature of melting ice, but that doesn't mean that water isn't constantly warmed by the surrounding warmer water, leading to more melt, which keeps the water at a constant temperature of melting sea ice.

Until the sea ice finally melts away, and that water warms and becomes the 'surrounding warm water' of new melting sea ice.

[siili]

Hi Anu, Phil is probably getting his temperatures from this http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=CGDT which indeed show cold water temperaturers measured by Healy.

The page you are referering to is probably outdated, i have even never got in running on my screen.

[siili]

Sorry, i was still in the NWP i ment this http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP

[siili]

With a good nights sleep for at least some of us, maybe we can start a hopefuly somewhat more intelligent story of yet another of the dwindeling number of previously white spots in the (insert your your pic her) passive micowave maps.

This time i'm talking about the area south of Wrangel Island, on the Bering Strait side, which on my second to last complete map was still high concentration, but today is full of low concentration fingers, spreading with the winds towards Siberia guided by the high preasure ridge, also nicely visible in the visible, i might add, without mentioning the p word.

On the other side of the mirror Zhang is beeing ridiculed for forecasting this old ice to be gone in August, an impossible thing, well i'm not so sure about that, but i keep observing.

[Neven]

Update to the post: based on the data in the latest web cam image I have estimated Healy's position (August 9th). Let me know if I got it wrong.

[siili]

The UT 7 image says 73 03.7N 138 12.5W which is spot on. Have you considered using Uni Bremens NP-37 image as an alternative, it's a bit more detailed in the area of interest? http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/NP-37_visual.png

[siili]

In the NWP a "new" giant floe is on the move towards Byam Martin Island, and looks like it has about the maximum size to squese through Austin channel, if it does not crack or gets trapped before that. What does Patrick and other watchers think?

[siili]

At it appears to be hotly persued by SVP buoy 79195, travelling with a mean speed of 0.1 knots in the last week and accelerating.

[siili]

Is everybody else back in the saltmines already, this is my last day of freedom so i'll try to do the most of it?

Big news in the arctic, Healy has made a sharp turn, and his supposed buddy is steaming in the opposite direction, what is going on, is US and Canada breaking up? Or are they running for shelter from the horribly packed isobars to the north? What will they do to our precious ice? So many questions, stay tuned for the next episode of our new show "The fast and furious of the arctic".

[Nick Barnes]

No, that floe won't make it out of Byam Martin channel into Austin Channel, at least not in one piece.

[siili]

Now the Healy is fast swimming to the south as well, are they planning a beach party at the cosy Mackenzie River, maybe having a bonfire on the methane hydrates , without inviting us?

[Anu]

Siili,
thanks, I didn't realize that this site someone mentioned:
http://www.icefloe.net/cruisetrack.html

was about 22.5 hours behind a more up to date site:
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP

The first site has always worked for me, and is a nicer interface (pop-up info when you click on a track marker), but its most recent marker is Aug 8, 16:30, compared to Aug 9, 15:00 on the second site.
Oh well.

[Peter Ellis]

OK, referring to the chart Anu pointed to here (https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://continentalshelf.gov/missions/10arctic/background/media/TracklineJul10_3sm.pdf),">http://continentalshelf.gov/missions/10arctic/background/media/TracklineJul10_3sm.pdf),">https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://continentalshelf.gov/missions/10arctic/background/media/TracklineJul10_3sm.pdf), the Healy isn't following any of the labelled lines.

If I overlay their actual track from here (http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP), it seems what they've actually done so far is:

1) Enter via Bering Strait

2) Follow the coastline round to 140 degrees W. Not sure of the exact details here, but they seem to be following approximately the 100m contour - is this a significant figure in regard to maritime law / boundaries?

3) From 140 degrees W, they headed directly outwards from the shore until they reached the continental dropoff.

4) Right angle turn left, continue till they get back to 140 degrees W, then follow the 140 degree longitude southwards.

5) Currently heading westwards along the coast, but a little further offshore. Not sure what they're following here, doesn't seem to be a consistent contour though.

[Torbenwb]

USCG Healey is back in the ice heading straight to the north - right now at at 73.30 N but according to an update on their website they are planing to go as far as 85 N this time! Maybe they should just cross the arctic instead....