Thin Ice Jeopardizes Polar Bears in Manitoba: CBC News

Hundreds of polar bears in northeastern Manitoba may face an increased risk of starvation due to delayed ice formation along the western coast of Hudson Bay, conservationists say.

Higher-than-normal temperatures have prevented ice from forming in the region, putting it three to four weeks behind schedule, according to the Canadian Ice Service, a division of Environment Canada. As a result, minimum ice cover there is the lowest since 1971, Canadian Ice Service forecaster Luc Desjardins said.

Formation of sea ice is critical for polar bears, which use it as a platform for catching seals and other marine mammals.

While a recent aerial survey of 333 polar bears along the bay's western coast showed the bears to be in good condition, conservationists worry the animals' health will deteriorate quickly if ice does not form in the next few weeks.

"The conditions that are occurring are indicative of the ice coverage that we would see probably in the mid-October time frame, rather than the mid-November," Desjardins told CBC News last month.

Normally by late November, a thin layer of ice up to 15 miles long would have formed, stretching seaward from the bay's western and southern coastlines, he said.

"The ice is almost non-existent this year, compared to our long-term normal," Desjardins said.

Where there is ice, "it's very patchy in terms of formation and it's not a distinct pattern that affects the entire length of the coast of Hudson Bay."

Desjardins stressed that the amount of ice has fluctuated in recent years and 2010 levels are not "significantly different" from those of the last five or six years.

What is different, however, is temperature: the region's air temperature is “consistently warmer" than in recent years, he said.

In Nunavut's Foxe Basin, the temperature is 14 degrees above normal.

Winter is the polar bear's feasting season. From November until early summer, they fatten themselves on ringed seals, bearded seals and other mammals. In the summer, during what's called a "walking hibernation," the average polar bear loses 1.6 kilograms of weight per day.

Ideally, the slow, heavy predators have enough weight by the end of the summer to make it back onto the ice platforms and hunt anew for fatty mammals.

"The longer that ice is in forming, the longer the polar bears have to survive on the fat reserves they put down in the spring and conserved right through the summer," said Peter Ewin, an Arctic specialist for the World Wildlife Fund.

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Staking Arctic Claims

Ambitious fleets of nuclear-powered Polar class icebreakers and submarines. Huge Arctic oil and gas drilling platforms. Floating nuclear reactors. Aggressive undersea mapping. Big investments in ports, rescue stations and other infrastructure.

Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership Russia is sparing no expense to exploit the Arctic and its resources. As the Star’s Paul Watson has just reported from Murmansk, Moscow is pumping billions into its northern cities and resources. It is tapping deeply into the region’s rich energy and mineral potential. And it has visions of developing its Northern Sea Route (or Northeast Passage) to speed shipping between Europe and Asia as global warming melts the polar ice.

By Canadian standards, this Arctic gold rush is daunting in its scope. Granted, Russia has invested heavily there for the better part of a century, for only a modest payout so far. And there’s growing concern about damaging the fragile Arctic ecosystem. But as the northern regions open to science, commerce and tourism, Moscow clearly aims to steal a march on the rest of the world.

All of which confirms the wisdom of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s moves to modestly firm up Canada’s own presence in the north by investing in its politics, people and infrastructure.

Harper has made Arctic sovereignty a priority. Through the Arctic Council that includes the U.S., 

Russia and other countries, he has committed Canada to a search-and-rescue role in a plane crash or other accident, and to drawing up protocols for averting and coping with offshore oil spills. Ottawa is mapping our undersea claims. There are plans to refurbish a deepwater port at Nanisivik on Baffin Island, and there’s a new military training centre at Resolute Bay.

Harper has also earmarked $4 billion for a three-season polar class icebreaker to navigate our own Northwest Passage, and for Arctic patrol vessels with helicopter pads and modest icebreaking capacity. There have been calls, too, for Ottawa to base new-generation rescue aircraft or helicopters in the region. And to upgrade airstrips.

All this adds up to a relatively modest down payment on a better foothold in the region. It will be some years yet before new Canadian ships ply the Arctic waters. And our regulators are rightly refusing to issue offshore drilling permits unless spills can be contained. But Ottawa is staking a bolder Arctic claim on behalf of future generations. It’s the forward-looking thing to do.

Our Extreme Weather: Is Arctic Sea Ice Loss Partly to Blame? by Jeff Masters in a Wunderblog Repost

Arctic sea ice in September 2007 reached its lowest extent on record, approximately 40% lower than when satellite records began in 1979. Sea ice loss in 2011 was virtually tied with the ice loss in 2007, despite weather conditions that were not as unusual in the Arctic. Image credit: University of Illinois Cryosphere Today.

“The question is not whether sea ice loss is affecting the large-scale atmospheric circulation…. It’s how can it not?” That was the take-home message from Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, in her talk “Does Arctic Amplification Fuel Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes?”, presented at last week’s American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Dr. Francis presented new research in review for publication, which shows that Arctic sea ice loss may significantly affect the upper-level atmospheric circulation, slowing its winds and increasing its tendency to make contorted high-amplitude loops. High-amplitude loops in the upper level wind pattern (and associated jet stream) increases the probability of persistent weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially leading to extreme weather due to longer-duration cold spells, snow events, heat waves, flooding events, and drought conditions.

Summertime Arctic sea ice loss: 40% since 1980

The Arctic has seen a stunning amount of sea ice loss in recent years, due to melting and unfavorable winds that have pushed large amounts of ice out of the region. Forty percent of the sea ice was missing in September 2007, compared to September of 1980. This is an area equivalent to about 44% of the contiguous U.S., or 71% of the non-Russian portion of Europe. Such a large area of open water is bound to cause significant impacts on weather patterns, due to the huge amount of heat and moisture that escapes from the exposed ocean into the atmosphere over a multi-month period following the summer melt.

The extent of Arctic sea ice loss in the summer July – August – September period in 2007 was about 1.4 million square miles (3.6 million square kilometers) greater than in 1980, according to the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. For comparison, the lost ice coverage (orange colors) was equal to an area about 44% of the size of the contiguous U.S., or 71% of the non-Russian portion of Europe.

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Tropical Sea Temperatures Influence Melting in Antarctica

A photo from the window of a NASA aircraft shows the rift across the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf running off toward the horizon. The plane flew across the crevasse on Oct. 26, 2011 as part of Operation IceBridge, taking detailed measurements of depth, width and shape. The ice shelf has not calved a major iceberg since 2001. (Credit: Michael Studinger/NASA)

Accelerated melting of two fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely the result, in part, of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new University of Washington research.

Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.

"This part of Antarctica is affected by what's happening on the rest of the planet, in particular the tropical Pacific," he said.

The research involves the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, two of the five largest glaciers in Antarctica. Those two glaciers are important because they drain a large portion of the ice sheet. As they melt from below, they also gain speed, draining the ice sheet faster and contributing to sea level rise. Eventually that could lead to global sea level rise of as much as 6 feet, though that would take hundreds to thousands of years, Steig said.

NASA scientists recently documented that a section of the Pine Island Glacier the size of New York City had begun breaking off into a huge iceberg. Steig noted that such an event is normal and scientists were fortunate to be on hand to capture a video recording. Neither that event nor the new UW findings clearly link thinning Antarctic ice to human causes.

Read more @ ScienceDaily.com