Arctic

Arctic Ocean

Sea Ice loss: isolating effects on polar bears

The animation shows ASCAT radar imagery from 01 Dec 2012 to 22 Feb 2013. This is single channel radar at 5 Ghz, or grayscale. It could be mixed as an additional channel with Jaxa radar imagery to false-colorize it more informatively.

It shows a block of newish ice (initial yellow outline) pushing down on the multi-year ice and squeezing a good part of it out the Fram Strait (final purple outline). There seems to be good export action out the Bering Strait as well.

It can be seen that the Svalbard region, home of some 4,000 polar bears, has minimal sea ice this winter. This will lead to bears being concentrated in a small area as they cannot hunt seals from pack ice, which in turn will lead to conflicts.

Genetic isolation of the (reduced) bear population would be unfavorable for long-term polar bear survival. Thus the question revolves around the extent of sea ice in the summer of 2013.