Polar bear habitat at mid-winter as extensive as 2013 & better than 2006

polarbearscience

Arctic sea ice at the middle of winter (January-March) is a measure of what’s to come because winter ice is the set-up for early spring, the time when polar bears do most of their feeding on young seals.

[Mid-winter photos of polar bears are hard to come by, partly because the Arctic is still dark for most hours of the day, it’s still bitterly cold, and scientists don’t venture out to do work on polar bears until the end of March at the earliest]

At 12 February this year, the ice was similar in overall extent to 2013 but higher than 2006.

Remember, as far as polar bears are concerned, we can discount what’s happening in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of St. Lawrence because these are outside the bears’ range (12 Feb 2020 below).

So for ice extent relevant to polar bears, this…

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