At mid-month, there is still an abundance of thick first year ice over much of Hudson Bay, suggesting that – yet again – this will not be an early breakup year for Western Hudson Bay polar bears. The early breakup years in the past (like 2010) that generated all kinds of panic amongst polar bear specialists have not developed into ever-continuing declining trend (Lunn et al. 2016) or another abrupt step-change like there was in 1998/99 (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017).
In the last few years conditions have been more like they were in the 1980s than the prophesied catastrophe we were promised. I don’t see a ‘tipping point’ for Hudson Bay; do you see a tipping point?
The more light green areas of thinner ice present, as there was in 2010 (below), the earlier breakup is apt to be:
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