As promised, our plan is to enable you to discover as much as possible about Pen Hadow before his event for Jenrick CPI at the IOD on the 12th June. So with that in mind, we wanted to tell you more about his forthcoming 2009 expedition - The Arctic Survey.
This article gives you a summary of the aims of the expedition, but for more detail, please visit the website dedicated to The Arctic Survey – http://www.thearcticsurvey.com/.
Introduction:
Polar explorer Pen Hadow is to lead major scientific survey of the Arctic ice cap thickness.
It will be the first true survey that identifies (and reports upon) the real speed of global climate change and will endeavour to determine how long there will be a permanent ice cap at the North Pole.
Hadow’s Arctic Survey will capture the most detailed and accurate data ever recorded of its thickness and enable scientists to predict more precisely than ever before when the North Pole ice cap will cease to be a year-round global feature.
Hadow (and his team) will be taking over 20 million readings using a specially-developed, 4kg impulse radar (reduced from 100 kg), backed up by manual ice-drilling, to determine snow and ice-thickness.
Their conclusions will assist governments throughout the world to prepare for the consequences of its meltdown.
The facts:
Current predictions for the melting of the ice cap vary wildly, from 100, to just 16, years from now.
The ice cap is receding by over 300,000 square kilometres every year (an area the size of Poland, Italy, the Philippines or the United Kingdom and greater than the size of California) because of global warming.
It is also feared to be thinning rapidly.
The disappearance of the permanent ice cap will cause accelerated climate change, rising sea levels, and even geo-political conflicts over resources which will affect almost every region of the world.
As the ice cap melts, sea levels rise; during the 20th century sea levels rose between 10 and 20cms. A further increase of between 20cms and 80cms could lead to 300m people being flooded each year.
A rise of between 8cms and 30cms could lead to Indonesia losing up to 2000 of its 17,508 islands.
The Expedition:
“We will be transmitting data in unprecedented amounts, opening up science and real polar exploration to a global audience for the first time direct from the ice,” Pen also says on the website.
The team will be transmitting data on a daily basis back to the media and science world – and also to their website.
The team set out on February 2009.
We wish you all the best Pen!
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