Re: Sailing round Greenland?

D. Patterson wrote:
"Erik Hammerstad" <egeha.is.all.you.need@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4uqvttF1950cvU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Daryl Krupa wrote:
D. Patterson wrote:
<snip>
In any case, the ice depicted in the BBC chart fails to reveal the existence
of large areas of open water, polynyas, which occur even in the recent past
in areas as large as 2,000 square miles of the Arctic pack ice. Given the
past melts and future melts,
the northern coastline of greenland must have
occassionally experienced extensive areas of open water
larger and more frequent than we have seen
in our own recent past century of recordkeeping.
<snip>

Not so.
Polynyas are the result of rare combinations of currents, winds,
and restrictions of current flow.
The confined conditions of Baffin Bay, combining the currents
filtering through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from the
Beaufort Sea, from the polar Arctic Ocean through Nares Strait,
and deep water from the North Atlantic Ocean, and the counter-
clockwise rotation created by the interaction of the northward
current on the east side with the southward current on the west
side (similar to at atmospheric low-pressure cell),
do not exist on the north coast of Greenland.
There is no physical reason to expect that
"the northern coastline of greenland must have
occassionally experienced extensive areas of open water
larger and more frequent than we have seen
in our own recent past century of recordkeeping."
Agreed, except for a possibility during the Holocene climate optimum some 4-5 kya. But at that time there were no Norse trying to sail around Greenland :-)

Let me add that the UCAR simulations seem to show a continuous ice blockage at the north end of the Kane Basin for the next 40 years, while from about 2020 the ice coverage north of Greenland is less than 100% and also among the Canadian Arctic islands. Detailed images: http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/arctic.shtml

So, you choose to promote the idea that contemporary statistical computer simulations known to be less than 100 percent accurate are somehow supposed to constitute a superior substitute for the reality of artifacts and contemporaneous historical records?

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17407

You have obviously not read the text of the link you provided. Apart from that, please show where the historical records are which describe the polynyas a millenium ago. Or if you can't, what about any evidence showing that the Greenland Norse went past the Kane Basin?

As for the claim that th Norse period in Greenland was warmer than today, please see figure 2 in http://tinyurl.com/vn7w7, it wasn't. The whole MOG 31 report can be downloaded from http://www.dpc.dk/sw784.asp
.

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