News from the North

[Randi]

Kevin Wood, who's running the new US oldWeather (see the test version at ow3.heroku.com) is a sailor as well as a scientist - so much so that he's out in the Bering Strait at the moment, on a research cruise measuring the current state of the Arctic. (oldWeather can tell us about the climate of 100 years ago, but somebody still has to make measurements today for comparison). Kevin can't read the forum from his ship, but he has sent us a message by satellite phone. (There should be a photo to go with it, but so far the satellite hasn't sent that through).

--------------------------------

Hello everyone. I had only a glimpse of the new OW beta interface before sailing from Nome on 10 July on the Russian research vessel PROFESSOR KHROMOV, but it was really great to see the first positive reactions to the US logs on the forum, and also the work going straight-away into getting invaluable feedback to Stuart and the Zooniverse gang. We're looking forward with growing excitement as the inventory of US logs ready to go up on Old Weather fills in - those of famous BEAR and JEANNETTE of course, but also ones from the more workaday vessels like the Navy tug USS PINTA. What untold stories will be found in those logbooks?

I'm writing today from our first oceanographic station in the eastern Bering Strait. It's one of the clearest days I can recall in ten years' work on the Bering Strait line. Looking off to the west I can see the Diomede Islands and Fairway Rock, and beyond all the way to East Cape, in Siberia. A mere 39 meters below our keel is the now-submerged Bering Land Bridge that once linked North America and Asia, though from here it is easy to imagine making the crossing in a small craft like a bidara. The warm current flowing from the Bering Sea into the Arctic can be seen unmistakably in the wake trailing from our instrument buoys.

132 years ago William Dall, in the US Coast Survey schooner YUKON, made probably the first oceanographic transect of the Bering Strait on the same line we're on at this moment; East Cape to Cape Prince of Wales, just north of the Diomede Islands. When he did it, though, he couldn't get within five miles of the Siberian shore because of heavy sea ice coming around into the Strait from the Chukchi Sea. A similar situation occurred during the 2nd International Polar Year in 1932, when the Russian steamship SIBIRIAKOV was trapped in the sea ice near Long Strait (between Wrangell Island and Siberia) and was eventually carried out (minus a propeller) into the Bering Sea by way of East Cape. We haven't seen anything like this over the last ten years or more, but even so it is difficult to understand the significance of these kinds of events in isolation. We need more data, and this data can only be extracted from the ship logbooks you are working on at Old Weather. I expect it's going to be a rewarding voyage for us all.

Kevin.

[Randi]

Very interesting! I got curious about what a bidara looked like, and this is the only picture my bing search threw up. A very long, narrow sealskin canoe, it looks like.

http://www.unimak.us/ethnography.shtml


Also that site had climate information, preparing us for what we are getting into. ;D
http://www.unimak.us/climate.shtml

[krwood]

Here is a great video about the impact of climate change on indigenous communities in Alaska -
https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseri ... e8dDSSfatU
It mentions the Arctic Report Card which is one of the projects I'm also involved in.

[Michael]

Very powerful and disturbing...