Posted on April 22, 2021
Late April is the height of the most important polar bear feeding and mating season and there is abundant sea ice habitat across the Arctic for doing both.
Sea ice charts below. Compare to 2018 conditions here; 2015 here; and 2014 here. Sea ice maximum this year was apparently “uneventful” according to the folks at the NSDIC because it didn’t even come close to setting a new low record.
SEA ICE CANADA
Ice thickness by region
Eastern Canadian Arctic, where brown is thick multi-year ice and dark green is thick first year ice, for the week of 19 April:
Hudson Bay and Davis Strait, where brown is thick multi-year ice and dark green is thick first year ice, for the week of 19 April:
Western Canadian Arctic, where brown is thick multi-year ice and dark green is thick first year ice, for the week of 19 April:
BEAUFORT AND CHUKCHI SEAS
Where brown is thick multi-year ice and dark green is thick first year ice for April 21:
BARENTS SEA, KARA SEA AND EAST GREENLAND
I’m getting quite irritated by frequent adverts on TV saying I need to give money to save polar bears.
I’m quite a sceptic about handing money over to a “charity” that “saves” polar bears but doesn’t say exactly what it will do with the money. Does anyone have the bank details for any polar bear so I can I put the money directly into its account and save on admin costs and Charity CEO salaries?
If you’re serious, I’m a polar bear.
I’m a polarbear and so is my wife.
Me too and I have a bank account where you can send the money.
No, but my uncle saves blondes for a dollar, 😉
The money rolls in.
Where does he save them?
The Spearmint Rhino in Las Vegas.
I saw one about sponsoring an elephant. My BS detector went into hyperdrive. The charity may do good work but showing a baby elephant rolling in the dirt is too much for me.
Some comments are saying they are from polar bears. I doubt it as a real PB would have no place to charge their electronic devices.
solar energy , of course.! You know its cheap and reliable. !
Don’t be silly. Polar bears can’t afford electronic devices.
Of course we can’t afford to buy them, yet (please give generously) – we rely on scaring the s#:! out of tourists and using theirs!
humf humf chomp … GROOAAOOWWLL !!
If you Google “Save the polar bears” this is the first one up:
Join WWF Today
Climate change. Habitat loss. Poaching. Deforestation. In every corner of the world, wildlife and wild places are in danger. That’s why WWF is working every day in nearly 100 countries, doing all we can to protect vulnerable species and habitats from these and other threats.
As a WWF member, you will be the voice for polar bears . . .
Aaargh! Not the Amazon rainforest scammers again.
Polar Bear Lives Matter….Too. Man has had Systemic Discrimination against them for centuries…time to end it…contribute generously …and often.
….just because they are white.
But don’t polar bears have black skin?
Save the Seals…..Ocean Conservation Namibia….seals are being saved by catching them and cutting plastic fishing lines and nets that are choking them.
There’s a lot of jokes about this but it’s really a serious issue. Polar bears seldom need or get anything from these WWF’s and Charities like them. Everyone should look at how the Billions are spent when they give to these rich corporate charities .
Polar bear eating black ringed seal… and enjoying it.
Obviously White privilege.
Polar bears are white, cisgender oppressors. I can’t see why the left is so keen on “saving ” them.
what happened to Black Bears Matter?
Turns out that’s just a front for a Make the Arctic Great Again cell, run by those privileged polar bears.
No, the black bears are using the money to buy nice homes in polar bear neighborhoods.
I’m certain Messrs Gore & Obama could give sound advice on sea-front property, but only in the $4million ball-park, hopefully the PBs will have earned that much very soon to take property advice from those two dedicated climate activists who are terrified of rising sea-levels!
Just wait until more greenies find out polar bears aren’t vegetarian, their heads are going to pop!
The polar bear issue with respect to Arctic sea ice extent is a reference only to the seasonal minimum in September. It is not about the seasonal high sea ice levels in winter and spring. What the sea ice extent is in April is irrelevant in this context.
It’s not irrelevant to the bears, it’s a busy and critical time for them.
One of the alarmist’s arguments is that sea ice is receding earlier and earlier, well here it is being shown, we are nearly at the end of April and there is plenty of ice.
In fact according to the US National ice centre this is the most ice there has been on this date since 2016.
If you just focus on where the alarmists want you to focus, you’ll be missing out on half the story.
Ice extent
Just spring ice thickness is important, to thick ice isn’t favorable for feeding the new born polar bears.
Five meters of ice– about 16 feet thick – is threatening the survival of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region along Alaska’s Arctic coast, according to Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career.That’s because the thick ice ridges could prevent ringed seals, the bears’ major prey, from creating breathing holes they need to survive in the frigid waters, Crockford told CNSNews.com.
Source
I wonder if Chaam ever read any of these replies. real question
NSDIC with the WMO and the Brit Met Office and NASA/NOAA all have this lefty alarmist angle. Foolish of them. Gonna look bad when cooling continues. Note prediction that La Niña will
‘Re-emerge’ fall 2021 thu’ winter to 2022.
Brit Met Office! I seem to recall under the Blair misguvment, a former head of WWF was appointed as their top manager, who I understood had the minimal of technical qualifications, & this was at the peak of the Wet Office’s loony claims!!! Don’t know about the US & Canada, but ALL guvemnt appointments are political ones, the Chief Scientific Officer, the Chief Medical Officer, etc. These are NOT the brainiest or best in their fields of “expertise”, but appointees who “fit in” with guvment views on this or that, etc. A great satirical tv show in the UK was “Yes Minister”, all about a hapless minister & his battles with his civil servants. When a new head of “whatever” was to be appointed, the two most senior civil servants would discuss such appointments (in their club of course), frequently using the terms that said candidate must be “knowledgeable”, & “sound”, & “impartial”, etc, but most importantly, “must have sympathy with the guvments views on…….etc!” I doubt it is significantly different elsewhere!
Getting some nice cloud free images recently over the Arctic from EOSDIS.
Wrangel island here, home for the Chukotka-Alaskan polar bear population, looking pretty paradisiacal if your a PB at the moment.
It’s difficult for ordinary people to know what the climate is doing. That’s because what we are being told by the experts changes over time. Sea ice is an example of that. Here’s side by side of what the IPCC told us in 1990 and 2000:
It seems that everything climate related is “Worse than previously thought”
There is no limit to how much the past can be cooled.
I sent the attached image to Australia CSIRO asking why their model had to cool the past to get something like the present temperature where there is no trend.
Their hand on heart reply was their model was middle of the road. It is all consensus driven science where no one can ever be wrong as long as they all agree.
By cooling the past so absurdly, they have eliminated any prospect of the 1998 El Nino event that really got the fire under the global warming hysteria.
It should be illegal to torture data.
To an AGWer, its only data… so it doesn’t matter.
All the good data comes from ensemble climatic models!
unPlanned Polar bears. Perhaps 3, 4, or more. Think of the cubs… I mean, fetuses.
So, things are bearing up…
Where’s the arctic passage that Putin was pushing during the canal problem? Could an icebreaker even get through the old ice?
No sign of Griff yet?
Right, let me proxy for him:
Blah blah blah, wibble wibble wibble.
you were correct.
The little child is so predictable.
The icebergs in central England are not as thick as they used to be
I know, alright. You don’t need to keep going on about it – I finally got around to de-icing my freezer, no big deal, ok?
Some funny posts here. However, I have a serious question: why does the NSIDC show ice at a lower level than this post? Just askin’.
The numbers all come from the NSIDC, so you’ll have to be more specific.
My question is, why are they still using the years 1981-2010 as their base? My guess is because it serves their Warmist agenda.
Measuring sea ice involves several sorts of things; agencies do not agree on how best to do this. One can learn about this by going to the explanation pages of the agencies, and searching for discussions of the processes.
A few of the maps shown in this post use the “egg code”, explained here:
sea-ice_symbols.pdf (vedur.is)
Other things:
Sea Ice | NOAA CoastWatch & OceanWatch
Then, of course, one can go and look:
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 [13]
*13 President of the Royal Society, Minutes of Council,
Volume 8. pp.149-153, Royal Society, London.
20th November, 1817.
“(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817”
Yes, it was just as warm in the recent past as it is today.
I believe the hot 1930’s saw a similar level of arctic sea ice melting, too.
I wonder what the arctic sea ice was like in the 1880’s? That was another very warm period in history.
Written records are very useful, especially in the confusion that is alarmist climate science. Written records keep the alarmism in check.
‘abundant’?
Far from it…
Area and extent are both at 4th LOWEST for the date in the 41 year satellite record. 37 years in that record when it was more ‘abundant’.
Early break up and low ice in the Barents and off Svalbard – both areas polar bears (used to) rely on.
In the 1990s there was on average a MILLION more sq km of ice on this date
In the 1980s there was on average 1.5 MILLION sq km more ice…
YAWN,
You still haven’t explained how polar bears made it through the MWP and the prior 8000 to 9000 years .
…… WHEN THERE WAS FAR LESS SEA ICE THAT THERE IS NOW.
The Polar Bears are VERY THANKFUL there is less ice than in the extreme high period of the Little Ice Age and the late 1970’s which made life very difficult for them.
Not only the Polar Bears LUV this slightly-less-that-chock-full sea ice that they are lucky to have now.
All the arctic life is BETTER OFF
Not only is the land surface GREENING, but the seas are also springing BACK to life after being TOO COLD and frozen over for much of the last 500 or so years (coldest period of the Holocene)
The drop in sea ice slightly toward the pre-LIA levels has opened up the food supply for the nearly extinct Bowhead Whale, and they are returning to the waters around Svalbard.
https://partner.sciencenorway.no/arctic-ocean-forskningno-fram-centre/the-ice-retreats–whale-food-returns/1401824
The Blue Mussel is also making a return, having been absent for a few thousand years, apart from a brief stint during the MWP.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959683617715701?journalCode=hola
Many other species of whale are also returning now that the sea ice extent has dropped from the extreme highs of the LIA. Whales cannot swim on ice. !
https://blog.poseidonexpeditions.com/whales-of-svalbard/
Great thing is, that because of fossil fuels and plastics, they will no longer be hunted for whale blubber for lamps and for whale bone.
Hopefully the Arctic doesn’t re-freeze too much in the next AMO cycle, and these glorious creatures get a chance to survive and multiply.
DON’T HATE ARCTIC LIFE SO MUCH, griff
REJOICE in the fact that the reduction in sea ice from the EXTREME HIGHS of the late 1970’s is A HUGE PLUS FOR ALL ARCTIC LIFE.
“In the 1990s there was on average a MILLION more sq km of ice on this date
In the 1980s there was on average 1.5 MILLION sq km more ice…”
Let’s see, the coldest temperatures in the last 40 years occurred during the late 1970’s, when climate scientists of the time were telling us the world might be entering into another ice age.
Then, around 1980, the temperatures started to warm and have warmed up to the present so it should be no surprise that there was more ice area in the 1980’s and 1990’s than today.
During the 1930’s the ice area also decreased due to very warm temperatures, but the ice area increased in susbsequent decades as the temperatures cooled from the 1940’s to the 1980’s.
Nothing to see here. Nothing unprecedented here, Griff.
Griff says, “My kindom for something unprecedented happening in the Earth’s weather.” Griff can’t buy an “unprecedented”. But he claims to see it everywhere.
But nsidc says that March sea ice extent for 2021 is 9th lowest in satellite era?
Doesn’t sound like a problem?
I celebrated Earth Day 2021 by recalling the FAILED prediction of Al Gore that the Arctic would be losing some or all of its ice in the summer months within five to seven years, i.e., at least by end-2016 (ref: Gore’s Dec. 14, 2009, speech at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, citing research associated with the Naval Postgraduate School; my bold emphasis added).
Just to be clear, the Arctic ALWAYS loses some of its areal ice extent in summer months compared to winter months . . . but was not the point being made by Al Gore when taken in the context of his speech.
I have been a geoscientist and environmental professional for 45 years and have never “celebrated” (or even acknowledged in any positive light) so-called “earth day.” It is a pagan ritual foisted on the young and the ignorant by lying snake-oil salesmen for the sake of power, prestige (pride) and profit. On campuses, greenies have been attempting to expand it to “earth week” or even “earth month” because, frankly, hardly anyone notices anymore.
See, I can’t help feeling they started badly and have declined since that point. It was originally Earth Hour, now it’s Earth Day? Making it Earth week or month won’t help – it’s going in the wrong direction and the wrong emphasis for the younger generation. If they had pitched an Earth Party Night when everyone went out and got plastered for the sake of the environment, they’d have a far stronger following by now.
Church Of The Sacred Carbon… | Musings from the Chiefio (wordpress.com)
Posted on 21 July 2012 by E.M.Smith
BTW, James Hansen was apparently even more arrogant than Al Gore (is that even possible?) when speaking to Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein back on June 24, 2008, he made his prediction that “in five to ten years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.” (source: https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/ ).
June 2018 was more than 3 years ago . . . and we still have summer sea ice in the Arctic.
The carnivorous rage. Donate to World Walrus Foundation. Think of the pups!