Thursday 30th April 2009

Business leaders across the country will hear polar explorer Pen Hadow speaking live from the high Arctic on Friday May 1st, at Business in the Community’s Prince’s May Day Summit on climate change.

Hadow will be telling the business conference attended by HRH The Prince of Wales about his experience of the region which is known to be highly vulnerable to global warming. (more…)

By David Ljunggren, 17 April 2009

The head of a British team walking to the North Pole on a mission to gauge how fast Arctic ice sheets are melting said on Friday he was surprised by how little permanent ice he had found so far.

Pen Hadow and two other adventurers set off in early March on a 1,000-km (620-mile) trek from Canada’s Arctic to the North Pole. The team was set down in an area where scientists had been sure there would be permanent multiyear ice. (more…)

The BBC posted a website article recently (see link at the footer of this article), stating that two of the core technological innovations currently being used within the Catlin Arctic Survey were proving to be very unreliable.

This is far from the case, as Simon Harris-Ward, Director of Operations for Catlin Arctic survey, highlights below:

“Given the very extreme conditions they are operating in during the Arctic winter we were always going to face potential difficulties with the array of advanced technology despite our robust testing programme.” (more…)

The Catlin Arctic Survey are trekking 700 miles to the North Pole to measure the thickness of the shrinking Arctic icecap.

However due to the proximity to magnetic north the compasses are “going haywire”. The freezing conditions also mean the latest global positioning satellite or GPS equipment will not work . . . that’s where the knickers come in very handy!!!! (more…)

If you want to get a feel for how cold it is where the CAS Team currently are, then watch the following video footage featuring Martin Hartley (just click on the image to go straight to the BBC website):

Three British Explorers were tonight finally resupplied with food, fuel and vital equipment after a Twin Otter plane landed on the Arctic Ocean floating sea ice where the team had been waiting for three days. (more…)

Polar explorers Pen Hadow, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels are surviving on half rations as attempts to resupply them were abandoned for the third  day running by the Catlin Arctic Survey.

The team, who have been battling in what they describe as ‘brutal’ conditions are currently surviving on their last food supplies after bad weather forced one resupply mission to turn back and grounded two other planned flights. The explorers now have only a day’s food remaining.  Temperatures have been consistently down at minus 40 degrees Celsius with strong winds making things even worse. (more…)

Take a quick visit (via the link below) to the BBC website for a quick update from Pen on how everything is going:

Pen Hadow: Catlin Arctic Survey - Day 12 update

Mary Ann Sieghart profiles the Polar explorer Pen Hadow, who is leading the Catlin Arctic Survey to determine the likely meltdown date of the ice cap. The British trailblazer and his team will drag a mobile radar unit more than 1000 kilometres as they trek to the North Pole.

Hadow, a self-confessed ‘tortured soul’, has been criticised by some in the past for his so-called reckless behaviour. But his current trip, he insists, is not about exploration, but about gathering scientific data that could be crucial to our understanding of climate change.

Mary Ann hears from friends and family of this enigmatic explorer.

Click here view the interview on BBC’s iPlayer

Broadcast on: BBC Radio 4, 7:00pm Saturday 7th March 2009 Duration: 14 minutes

Available until: 7:17pm Saturday 14th March 2009

Information from the BBC News Website

A team of polar explorers has travelled to the Arctic in a bid to discover how quickly the sea-ice is melting and how long it might take for the ocean to become ice-free in summers.

Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley will be using a mobile radar unit to record an accurate measurement of ice thickness as they trek more than 1,000km to the North Pole. (more…)