Ben Saunders - Polar Explorer, Motivational Speaker

Special Delivery

A dear friend of mine, the inimitable Paul Deegan, is showing the premiere of his new film, Special Delivery, at the London Apple Store on the evening of Thursday 11 October. The film, some seven months in the making, promises a fifteen-minute slice of high definition Himalayan heaven. I'll be there, and you're invited too.

{ Filed under Miscellany on September 24th, 2007 | 1 Comment }

Northwest Passage

It's been all over the news recently, but I've just stumbled across this incredible hi-res image from the European Space Agency's ENVISAT (which has been monitoring Arctic sea ice levels for nearly 30 years), showing the route of the Northwest passage (the orange line) free of sea ice for the first time in history.

According to Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre, the ice-covered area (light green in this image) is currently around 3 million sq km, which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minimum levels recorded in 2005/6. Over the last ten years the sea ice coverage has shrunk by around 100,000 sq km per year, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is an enormous change.

"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected and that we urgently need to understand better the processes involved."

{ Filed under Climate Change on September 17th, 2007 | 13 Comments }