*I can't blog this but I will link it as I care more for animals than I do for humans.
The polar bear has long been a symbol of the damage wrought by global warming, but now biologist Andrew Derocher and his colleagues have calculated how long one southerly population can hold out. Their answer? No more than a few decades, as the bears’ decline closely tracks that of the Arctic’s disappearing sea ice.
Hudson Bay ice update: more thick first year ice habitat for polar bears in 2018 than 2004
Despite pronouncements from one polar bear specialist that “ice in Hudson Bay is in rapid retreat” a look back in time shows that there is more thick first year ice over the Bay this year for the week of the summer solstice than there was in 2004 – and much less open water than 1998.
Ice coverage for some other recent years are shown below compared to 1998, the year the ice breakup pattern on Hudson Bay changed. Speed and melt sequences vary according to the amount of thick first year ice present, discussed previously here.
PS. If you’re wearing white today, flaunt it! Tell your friends and colleagues that you’re celebrating the success of polar bears despite such low summer sea ice since 2007 that 2/3 of them were predicted to disappear.
There are tons of graphics in this article > https://tinyurl.com/y9hp5jbt
