Tag Archives: primary productivity

Arctic Report: primary productivity still high & sea ice flatline continues despite warmer temperatures

Posted on December 14, 2022 | Comments Off

NOAAs annual Arctic Report Card is, for the most part, a valiant effort to turn good and ambiguous news into harbingers of climate change disaster. Primary productivity is up across most of the region (good news for wildlife) and despite Arctic temperatures being “twice as high” as the rest of the world in recent years, the summer sea ice ‘death spiral’ has failed to materialize.

Oddly, there is no bad news about polar bears (last mention was 2014). However, the media were told that the few hundred sea birds that died this year in the enormous Bering/Chukchi Sea region over the four months of summer in 2022 is a portend of climate change catastrophe–even though the authors of the NOAA report admit they have no conclusive evidence to explain the phenomenon. However, here are also some honest figures that are quite illuminating.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Arctic Report: primary productivity still high & sea ice flatline continues despite warmer temperatures

Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Arctic, Arctic warming, death spiral, good news, multiyear ice, NOAA, plankton, primary productivity, sea ice

A ‘mass exodus’ of polar bears from Alaska to Russia has taken place, local residents claim

Posted on January 2, 2022 | Comments Off

An article in a UK newspaper yesterday contains a claim made by local residents that polar bears which used to hang around Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) in western Alaska, are ‘moving to Russia’ (i.e. the Chukchi Sea) in a ‘mass exodus’. It’s certainly possible but if so, it should come as a surprise to no one and is good news for polar bears.

If the allegation is upheld by scientific evidence, polar bears will not have been pushed out of Alaska by lack of summer sea ice (i.e. ‘forced to migrate’) but rather pulled into the Chukchi Sea by abundant food resources that did not exist when summer ice cover was more extensive. It’s a big difference and it speaks to the benefits of less summer sea ice that no one wants to discuss.

Moreover, moving temporarily to where conditions suit them best is what polar bears do all the time: it’s not a new phenomenon, it’s a prominent feature of their biology (Crockford 2019).

Continue reading →

Comments Off on A ‘mass exodus’ of polar bears from Alaska to Russia has taken place, local residents claim

Posted in Life History, Population, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Alaska, Barrow, Beaufort, polar bear, primary productivity, sea ice

Polar bears are an environmental success story: short video from ICSC Canada

Posted on March 22, 2021 | Comments Off

From Tom Harris at ICSC Canada: In ‘State of the Polar Bear Report 2020’, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford writes, “in 2020, even though summer sea ice declined to the second lowest levels since 1979, there were no reports of widespread starvation of bears, acts of cannibalism, or drowning deaths that might suggest bears were having trouble surviving the ice-free season.”

22 March 2021 [1:34]

Comments Off on Polar bears are an environmental success story: short video from ICSC Canada

Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged ice-free season, polar bear, primary productivity, sea ice

Arctic report card 2020 highlights the huge benefit of less summer sea ice: more food

Posted on January 7, 2021 | Comments Off

As well as summarizing sea ice changes, NOAA’s 2020 Arctic Report Card features two reports that document the biggest advantage of much less summer sea ice than there was before 2003: increased primary productivity. Being at the top of the Arctic food chain, polar bears have been beneficiaries of this phenomenon because the Arctic marine mammals they depend on for food – seals, walrus and bowhead whales – have been thriving despite less ice in summer.