Tag Archives: spring ice maximum

Superb sea ice conditions for polar bears worldwide during their critical feeding period

Posted on April 3, 2015 | Comments Off on Superb sea ice conditions for polar bears worldwide during their critical feeding period

Prognosis, excellent. The sea ice hunting platform that polar bears require is everywhere and Davis Strait ice extent is the fourth-highest it’s ever been at this time of year.

Sea ice extent global 2015 April 2 NSIDC with anomaly WUWT

The spring feeding period is a messy, brutal business – many cute baby seals will die as polar bears consume 2/3rds of their yearly food supply over the next few months (April – June/early July), while sea ice is abundant.

Arctic marine mammals_Dec 31 2014_Polarbearscience

That leaves the remaining 1/3 of their energetic needs to be met over the following 9 months (most of it in late fall (late November/December) and hardly any during the summer months, regardless of whether the bears are on land or out on the sea ice) or over the winter. Continue reading

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Polar bear habitat update – more spring sea ice around Svalbard than 2014 & 2012

Posted on March 20, 2015 | Comments Off on Polar bear habitat update – more spring sea ice around Svalbard than 2014 & 2012

Polar bear habitat for the last week of March is well above average in eastern Canada for the second year in a row. The very low extent of ice in the Sea of Okhotsk – which has contributed strongly to the low maximum extent this year – is irrelevant to our discussion, since no polar bears live there.

Polar_Bear_male_Regehr photo_March 21 2010_labeled

There is a bit more concentrated ice around Svalbard than last year (or in 2012), although ice in the Barents Sea in general is still below average due to the state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The state of the AMO and its effects on Barents Sea polar bear sea ice habitat has nothing to do with global warming: it’s a cycle that has been documented for centuries (Miles et al. 2014).

Still, there is plenty enough sea ice for polar bear hunting: this is the beginning of the critical feeding time for all polar bears (see here and here), but especially for the survival of new cubs-of-the-year, so I have a few words about Western Hudson Bay cubs below.

Have a look for yourself.
Update: Added 20 March 2015, comparison maps from Cryosphere Today for 2006 vs. 2015.
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Polar bear habitat: Spring 2014 in Eastern Canada was much better than 1969

Posted on July 26, 2014 | Comments Off on Polar bear habitat: Spring 2014 in Eastern Canada was much better than 1969

It was a good year for polar bear habitat in the southern portions of Eastern Canada this spring – surprisingly, much better than it was in 1968 through 1970. And since spring conditions are what really matter to polar bears, this is good news indeed.

Environment Canada’s Canadian Ice Service recently published a nice little summary that has some rather eye-opening graphs. These describe the conditions for polar bears in the southern Davis Strait subpopulation – the one whose population size increased so dramatically between 1974 and 2007 despite lower-than-average ice extent in some years, even while their body condition declined (see here and here).

Environment Canada - Ice maps regions at July 26 2014

[Fitting post for the second anniversary of this blog, I think – more below1]

Note that I’ve added a “Blog Archive” page that lists all of my posts, easier to browse now that there are more than 200 of them.
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Polar bear habitat update – ice coverage at the beginning of this year’s critical feeding period

Posted on May 4, 2014 | Comments Off on Polar bear habitat update – ice coverage at the beginning of this year’s critical feeding period

Polar bears are all out on the sea ice at this time of year, feeding on new-born seal pups. Here’s a look at what the ice conditions are like at this critical time.

Polar_Bear_male on sea ice_Alaska Katovik Regehr photo_April 29, 2005_sm labeled

end April extent NSIDC May 4

The ice extent is still well within two standard deviations from the 1981-2010 average, which indicates no deviation from natural variation, as the graph (below) for May 1, 2014 from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows.

Sea ice extent 2014 May 1_NSIDC_graph

Between the official spring maximum (according to the NSIDC ) on March 21, with a total extent of 14.8 million km2, the ice slowly retreated in some regions and increased in others, while most regions remained pretty much the same. This is an important reminder that the Arctic as a whole is not a homogeneous region but one with marked regional variation.

As has been noted elsewhere (Sunshine Hours), ice in the Greenland Sea (habitat of ‘East Greenland’ bears) and the Barents Sea both increased in extent over this period. Bering Sea ice (habitat of southern ‘Chukchi Sea’ bears) declined markedly but Baffin Bay/Gulf of St. Lawrence ice (habitat of ‘Davis Strait’ bears) declined much less, as NOAA’s MASIE maps copied below show very well.

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