Tag Archives: sea ice

Big announcement coming this week

Posted on May 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Big announcement coming this week

New peer-reviewed polar bear paper of mine coming out, likely Monday or Tuesday. Watch for it.

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Posted in Sea ice habitat, Summary

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Explaining abundant polar bear sightings on the East Coast as an upshot of sea ice loss is absurd

Posted on April 30, 2022 | Comments Off on Explaining abundant polar bear sightings on the East Coast as an upshot of sea ice loss is absurd

Last week, a senior producer at CBC News, in order to concoct a timely story for ‘Earth Day’, attempted to explain the high number of sightings of polar bears this April in Newfoundland and Labrador, compared to the last two years, as a consequence of climate change and its handmaiden, loss of Arctic sea ice.

Title: ‘With an extinction threat looming, no wonder polar bears are at our door — and on the roof: there’s a grim reason why polar bears have been frequently showing up in coastal communities’. CBC News, 23 April 2022

The problem with this narrative is that the East Coast had much reduced sea ice in 2021 and virtually no polar bear sightings in Newfoundland and none in Labrador. There was more ice in 2020 than 2021 but also few bears. This year, ice extent was similar to 2020 for most of the region but polar bear sightings were up considerably.

In fact, the two years with the most sightings and problems with polar bears since 2008 were 2017 and 2018: in 2017, sea ice was exceptionally thick in April (although average in extent) and by June the sea ice was so thick and enduring that the Newfoundland fishing fleet couldn’t get out for spring openings; 2018 was another year of average sea ice extent and had even an even larger number of sightings than 2017, in Newfoundland especially (Crockford 2019:32). This suggests the sea ice vs. polar bear correlation on the East Coast since 2008 – if there even is one – may be the opposite of that stated in the CBC article: less ice usually means fewer bears onshore in Newfoundland and Labrador and more ice often means more bears.

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Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat

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Whaling crews and their encounters with polar bears and sea ice in 17th century Svalbard

Posted on April 26, 2022 | Comments Off on Whaling crews and their encounters with polar bears and sea ice in 17th century Svalbard

A new paper published today by Dagomar Degroot is a long but interesting historical account about sea ice and whaling in the 1600s around Svalbard that includes some details on interactions of whalers with polar bears (Figure 4 from the paper copied below). These were the early days of whaling in the Arctic: the wholesale slaughter of whales and polar bears didn’t happen until the 1800s.

The paper is open access, so free to download but I’ve copied the abstract and a short excerpt here.

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Posted in History, hunting, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat

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More fat polar bear sightings around homes on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula

Posted on April 12, 2022 | Comments Off on More fat polar bear sightings around homes on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula

Two recent incidents really remind me of the opening scene in my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN, and this time both were captured on film. They involved bears in good physical condition and luckily, no one has been hurt. There is still sea ice off the Northern Peninsula, which has brought the bears from the north.

On Sunday (10 April) in St. Anthony, a woman was alerted by her dog to what she though was someone on the front porch and found herself literally face to face with a polar bear when she opened the door; it then hopped up on her roof. The next day, in Goose Cove, a woman watched two bears (probably a female with a two year old male cub) explore the outside of a neighbour’s house and then walk across her driveway.

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Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat

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Another polar bear on Fogo, this time on the south shore as sea ice surrounds the island

Posted on April 10, 2022 | Comments Off on Another polar bear on Fogo, this time on the south shore as sea ice surrounds the island

On Friday, 8 April, a polar bear was photographed on the south coast of Fogo Island, Newfoundland at a time when sea ice surrounded the offshore island. The bear, spotted near North Side Road near Stag Harbour, was non-threatening to the point of being totally chilled out, but attracted enough human attention to cause traffic congestion. Another sighting a little more than a week ago near Tilting on the east side of the island could possibly have involved the same bear.

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Sea ice average for March is the metric used to compare to previous winters

Posted on April 5, 2022 | Comments Off on Sea ice average for March is the metric used to compare to previous winters

The average sea ice cover at the end of March is the metric used to compare ‘winter’ ice to previous years or decades, not the single-day date of ‘most’ ice. This year, March ended with 14.6 mkm2 of sea ice, most of which (but not all) is critical polar bear habitat. Ice charts showing this are below.

But note that ice over Hudson Bay, which is an almost-enclosed sea used by thousands of polar bears at this time of year, tends to continue to thicken from March into May: these two charts for 2020 show medium green becoming dark green, indicating ice >1.2 m thick, even as some areas of open water appear.

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Polar bear attempted to break down front door of house in Newfoundland with people inside

Posted on April 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Polar bear attempted to break down front door of house in Newfoundland with people inside

A frightening incident just after midnight on Sunday left a woman and her daughter on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland shaken when a polar bear tried to break down their front door. Luckily for them, the bear was not starving and therefore not persistent: it soon stopped without doing much damage and neighbours were able to drive it away from the house. Again, the premise of my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN, is that the bear could have gotten into the house if it had really been motivated by hunger to do so. And what if that had happened and there were no neighbours to call for help?

There is still abundant ice around the northern Peninsula (see below), and gov’t officials are warning residents to be wary of other bears reported in the region. A CBC story on the incident quotes local wildlife officials as saying they “generally receive between 30 and 60 calls about polar bears annually. There have been 10 this year so far.” However, as I’ve pointed out previously, it appears this has only been true since 2012 or so: lots of bears visiting Newfoundland and Labrador in the spring is a relatively new phenomenon.

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Arctic sea ice maximum extent was present for at least two weeks at about 14.9 million km2

Posted on March 22, 2022 | Comments Off on Arctic sea ice maximum extent was present for at least two weeks at about 14.9 million km2

US National Snow and Ice Data Center says the Arctic maximum extent for this winter peaked at 14.88 mkm2 on 25 February, but in fact this amount of ice coverage lasted for at least two weeks (22 February – 8 March), with very slight variation. Just a little something they all left out of their announcements, for some reason.

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Mid-winter polar bear sea ice habitat is abundant & within range of long-term average

Posted on February 23, 2022 | Comments Off on Mid-winter polar bear sea ice habitat is abundant & within range of long-term average

Ahead of International Polar Bear Day (27 February) this year, polar bear habitat is as abundant as it has been for decades. This is a tough time for polar bears, many of which will be finding it hard to find seals to eat, as newborn seals won’t be an available food resource for about a month in most areas. Thin and hungry bears are dangerous.

Sea ice charts below for the Arctic as a whole and by region.

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Fact checkers defend activist scientists because they agree with them not because they are right

Posted on February 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Fact checkers defend activist scientists because they agree with them not because they are right

The so-called fact-checkers are out again trying to insist one side of a scientific debate is wrong and another is right because they happen to agree with one side. That’s advocacy, not science.

Here are some facts (check the links provided for additional references):

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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat, Summary

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