Arctic Ice Thicker than Expected; Catlin Trek on reduced rations

By Richard Henry Lee

The science blog, Watts Up With That, has a story about a German team that flew over the Arctic and found ice thicker than expected. This comes at a time when the Catlin Arctic Survey team, which is trekking to the North Pole, is on reduced rations because a resupply flight has been postponed due to a blizzard.

The German team found ice up to four meters thick when they were expecting the ice to be about 2 meters thick.

The CAS expediton was designed to show that ice thickness is decreasing, but they have not released any ice thickness data yet.

Meanwhile the CAS team members are hoarding their food by reducing their food intake to only 1000 Calories per day. This is much less than 5500 to 6000 Calories per day they had been eating according to their web page.

The CAS expedition seems more like a stunt every day. If the resupply flight does not make it to the team soon, a rescue flight may be necessary. The leader of the team, Pen Hadow, had been rescued on the arctic ice in 2003 during another expedition.