Susan Crockford
The 1980s and early 1990s are said to have been the “good old days” for sea ice conditions and polar bears in Western Hudson Bay, with all tagged bears usually ashore by mid-to-late August. Then an abrupt step-change in sea ice breakup dates brought polar bears to shore an average of two weeks earlier in the late 1990s. From then until 2019, the only significant outlier to all tagged bears being ashore by about late July was 2009, which was such an unusually cold year that the last bears came ashore about August 20.
That pattern changed in 2020, when the last bears came off the ice as late as they had in 2009, on August 21. Something similar happened in 2022, when the last bears came off a small remnant of ice even later, about August 26. And this year, the bears may be moving ashore even later: there is even more ice remaining off WH and much of it is thick compacted ice that hasn’t melted much over the last few weeks, which means bears have been as late onshore as the 1980s for three out of the last five years.
About 40% of all tagged bears were still offshore at August 8. Below, chart showing position of tagged polar bears at August 8 (11/27 or 41% are still on the ice):
Two years ago, at August 7, 2022 (below), there appeared to be barely any ice off WH but we know that satellites notoriously under-report ice by up to 20% during the melt season because they misclassify melt-ponds over ice as open water. Still, the last tagged bears stayed offshore another two weeks in 2022 on whatever bits of ice remained, like they did in the 1980s when there was more ice available:
This year the situation is even more unusual. Against all predictions of deteriorating summer sea ice conditions, there is a large patch of thick to very thick sea ice off W. Hudson Bay. Below, see the daily sea ice stage of development chart (i.e. thickness) for August 10: W. Hudson Bay has much more ice this year than 2022, and there could be even more misclassified as open water:
Polar bear specialist Andrew Derocher dutifully reported the unexpected tagged polar bear/sea ice situation in WH last week but failed to mention that this is the third time in five years that bears have been offshore the first week in August as they were in the 1980s even as he acknowledges that this phenomenon should be good news for bear survival.
In my opinion, 40% of all tagged bears being offshore is what I would call more than “some.” So many bears offshore and the current ice conditions suggest it’s possible that more than one or two bears might remain on that large block of thick ice until very late August or even early September, which might be the first time that’s happened since the 1980s (if it even happened then).
For comparison, in 2022, at August 5, 33% of tagged bears (8/24) were still out on small patches of ice that satellites were obviously under-reported because (given that some bears appear to be on no ice whatsoever):
Even with some bears onshore, there has not yet been a problem bear report issued by the town of Churchill for 2024. In 2020, the first problem bear report (for the last week of August) was not released until September 1, so we may have to wait a few weeks more to find out the situation there.
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I imagine they disco like it’s Saturday night, Staying Alive and all that.
“This year the situation is even more unusual. Against all predictions of deteriorating summer sea ice conditions, there is a large patch of thick to very thick sea ice off W. Hudson Bay. Below, see the daily sea ice stage of development chart (i.e. thickness) for August 10: W. Hudson Bay has much more ice this year than 2022, and there could be even more misclassified as open water:”
I think the cause of this is the Canadian Forest Fire (Largest ever documented, that we were all choking on last year), caused a very mild spring / early summer. It is shocking that nothing has been reported about this.
I haven’t researched the 2023 fires but recall there were many separate events, unlike a 1950s fire. The Chinchaga fire was a forest fire that burned in northern British Columbia and Alberta in the summer and early fall of 1950. With a final size of between 1,400,000 and 1,700,000 hectares (3,500,000 and 4,200,000 acres), it is the single largest recorded fire in North American history. [ My bold]
Imagine that. 74 years of everything “bad” supposedly getting both more frequent and more severe “because climate change,” still not matched.
I like to say that in 3/4 of a century none of the doomsday predictions have come true.
Zero, zip, nada, none.
Thankyou.
That is big given one in northern WA region earlier.
NE BC is drier than most people realize, and gets droughts – my family suffered one on the farm in the mid 1950s, in the Peace region (adjacent Alberta may be similar). Agriculture is good there because a layer of clay under topsoil keeps water close to roots and wicking up.
Susan,
Thank you for all your efforts.
You tell an important story, well.
Auto
How dare you bring data, evidence, and facts in context to the
conversationleftist rant about polar bears?! You have stolen my dreams of glorious activism, and my childhood of fairytales about vanishing polar bears with your words.A recommendation. Use socialist instead of leftist.
I think leftist covers it better than anything else.
Do AGW advocates still talk about polar bears? Might be beating a dead … bear?
We’re talking about a relatively small area here, right?
Current Arctic sea ice extent (blue line) is shown here against the 1980s mean (dark grey line).
Around 2 million km2 below the 1980s average.
And yet Polar Bears are thriving. Go figure.
The only threat there ever was to Polar Bears was excessive hunting by humans. Once they put a stop to that, Polar Bears ceased to be “endangered” by any reasonable criteria.
Current Arctic sea ice is only a bit down from the MAXIMUM it has been during the LIA..
.. and FAR ABOVE the extent for most of the last 10,000 years.
Using the 1979 peak as a reference point, is childish and displays complete ignorance.
That will leave a mark.
So tell me how 2024 is worse than 2012?
[QUOTE FROM ARTICLE]”For comparison, in 2022, at August 5, 33% of tagged bears (8/24) were still out on small patches of ice that satellites were obviously under-reported because (given that some bears appear to be on no ice whatsoever):”[END QUOTE]
Maybe we need to be more skeptical of reports of sea ice area from satellites. How long can a polar bear tread water?
If they can swim for 9 days, I would guess at least that long:
https://wwf.panda.org/es/?199163/First-evidence-of-polar-bears-swimming-long-distance-study#:~:text=The%20scientists%2C%20who%20are%20studying,of%20687km%20(426%20miles).
Swimming is not the same as standing on the surface of ice.
As I understand it, Polar Bears go out on ice because that is where the seals are. Where do the seals go when there is no ice? Do the Polar Bears go there?
They may prefer seal pups, which is a limited period of each year.
Otherwise I presume the seals are on shore. Where polar bears could eat them?
The Hudson Bay Company was formed in 1670.
Being a produce and shipping company, I wonder what records they have of Hudson Bay sea ice.
Well just a quick google already shows some very old images fotoos and drawings, where Ice or snow is nowhere to be found. Must have been the indians with their wigwams.
Tim Ball studied HBC records of temperature.
They’d been logged as the company hoped they could see a pattern of fur animal population variation with weather.
But alas Mr. Ball is gone.
In the Andrew Derocher comment:
“should bode well for fat bears”
There must be plenty of vegetables for the bears to feed on if they are fat and healthy.
(don’t call me) Surely the fate of seals is as important as polar bears /sarc
Send them some virtue-seeking far-left vegans.
Not high in nutrition, and probably a bit anaemic, but food is food. !
Thankyou Susan, plugging away with facts as you usually do.
Wind moves ice around? Who’d a thunk of that? 😉
I understand the bears survive on land, eating berries and perhaps some vegetation – they aren’t exclusively carnivores, and some small animals. And humans if they can catch them. :-o)
BTW, aren’t polar bears good at storing fat in good times to cover lean times?