Sea ice formation is ahead of usual in some regions and behind in others but overall, sea ice habitat is abundant enough for this time of year for virtually all polar bears across the Arctic to be back out on the sea ice hunting seals.
Overall, there was more sea ice at 24 November 2020 than there was on the same date in 2016, which was the last year that a number of polar bear subpopulations were surveyed, including Western and Southern Hudson Bay, Southern Beaufort, Chukchi Sea (Crockford 2019, 2020), see graph below from NSIDC Masie:
Northern Hemisphere sea ice at 24 November, 2016-2020.
UPDATE 27 November 2020: Problem bear report published today (for week 13, Nov. 16-22) has been added below.
You must be logged in to post a comment.