Replace of polar bear habitat for late July 2021 in comparison with earlier years – Watts Up With That?

From polar bear science

Here is a trip back in time to the Arctic sea ice in late July that I don’t think provides any evidence that a very low polar bear sea ice disaster is in sight this year.

A look at this year first:

The ice in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas is mainly thick perennial ice (brown), as shown in the following diagrams (Chukchi and western Beaufort first) from the Alaska Sea Ice Program. Wrangel Island in the western Chukchi Sea, which is a major Denning area and summer refuge for polar bears, is still surrounded by ice (in fact, ice covers most of the Chukchi Sea label):

East to Central Beautort, by the Canadian Ice Cream Service, for the week of July 26th. That open waters offer important feeding areas on the ice edges for seals (and thus hunting potential for bears):

Hudson Bay is practically ice-free at this point, earlier than in previous years, but not exceptional as I explained last week. As I also pointed out in this post, due to the problems satellites have in interpreting melting ice, there is almost certainly more ice than what is shown on this map. Oddly enough, Andrew Derocher hasn’t updated the tracking map for his remaining bears with satellite collars since July 19: I think he’s too busy. The same goes for the Town of Churchill Problem Bear Reports, which have not been updated since July 12th. However, some of the bears that came ashore near Churchill and hang out on the banks of Wapusk National Park were spotted from Explore.org’s live cams.

Compare this year with previous years

2021

2020

2019

2018:

2017:

2016:

2015:

2014:

2013 (the Canadian chart is the only one I have in my archive for this period in 2013):

Here is Canada above this year for comparison with 2013:

I don’t see an impending sea ice disaster in 2021, do you see an impending sea ice disaster?

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