New polar bear hunting habitat forming already along the coast of the Laptev Sea: A new trend?
Posted on October 6, 2022
Not even three weeks after the yearly minimum of sea ice extent was reached this year, new shorefast ice is already forming off the coast of Siberia, which is critical fall hunting habitat for polar bears.
So, not only was this year’s sea ice extent for September at the very lowest extreme of predicted levels for late summer, given ever-increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, new ice seems to be forming earlier in the fall as well, which bodes well for winter ice formation. It’s looking to me like the decade-long increasing trend of September ice extent since 2012 (see below) may indicate a change more biologically relevant to ice-dependent Arctic animals than the zero trend since 2007.
Shorefast ice across the Arctic
Virtually everywhere in the peripheral seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents, Kara, Laptev, Chukchi, Beaufort, as well as Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, shorefast ice thick enough to support a polar bear forms before the mobile ice pack in the central Arctic expands to the shores of the peripheral seas (below). The Laptev Sea is often the first to experience this new shorefast ice formation because of the bitterly cold winds that blow north from Siberia.
https://polarbearscience.com/2022/10/06/new-polar-bear-hunting-habitat-forming-already-along-the-coast-of-the-laptev-sea-a-new-trend/
