Sentences with phrase «summer polar ice»

* The late - summer polar ice cap, already at historic lows today, would shrink only another quarter and hold steady by century's end, instead of melting by more than three - quarters with no let - up in sight.

Warm air and surface water are melting the summer polar ice cap.

Not exact matches

MISSOULA, Mont. — Starving polar bears, icon of the climate change movement, may be able to adapt to an ice - free summer season in the Arctic after all.

Operation IceBridge, NASA's airborne survey of polar ice, is flying in Greenland for the second time this year, to observe the impact of the summer melt season on the ice sheet.

As a warming climate continues to accelerate the summer ice melts, it is important to understand how polar bears are — or are not — adapting to even more extreme food shortages.

When polar bears» feeding opportunities decrease during the summer ice melt, the animals can reduce their energy expenditure a little, but not enough to make up for the food shortages, a study in the 17 July issue of Science shows.

The results suggest that polar bears, both on ice and shore, can not slow down their metabolism enough to make it through the summer without burning through much of their stored fat.

To measure polar bears» energy expenditure during the summer months, Whiteman and his colleagues used satellite collars to track the movement of individual bears, both on shore and on ice.

In some parts of the Arctic, sea ice loss is causing polar bears to spend longer periods on shore each summer.

Starting next week, NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, will be carrying science flights over sea ice in the Arctic, to help validate satellite readings and provide insight into the impact of the summer melt season on land and sea ice.

This year, sea ice in the Arctic reached its smallest maximum extent since satellites began tracking polar ice patterns, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, while scientists have also forecast ice - free Arctic summers in two to three decades (ClimateWire, July 16, 201ice in the Arctic reached its smallest maximum extent since satellites began tracking polar ice patterns, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, while scientists have also forecast ice - free Arctic summers in two to three decades (ClimateWire, July 16, 201ice patterns, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, while scientists have also forecast ice - free Arctic summers in two to three decades (ClimateWire, July 16, 201Ice Data Center, while scientists have also forecast ice - free Arctic summers in two to three decades (ClimateWire, July 16, 201ice - free Arctic summers in two to three decades (ClimateWire, July 16, 2013).

It has also decreased the amount of the oldest, thickest Arctic sea ice, leaving polar waters dominated by thinner ice that forms in the fall and melts in the summer.

As a result of atmospheric patterns that both warmed the air and reduced cloud cover as well as increased residual heat in newly exposed ocean waters, such melting helped open the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time [see photo] this summer and presaged tough times for polar bears and other Arctic animals that rely on sea ice to survive, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Climate change is pushing temperatures up most rapidly in the polar regions and left the extent of Arctic sea ice at 1.79 million square miles at the end of the summer melt season.

These dark fans develop on the top of the polar carbon dioxide ice sheet, as it thaws over the spring and summer months.

Because of this, ice deposits in the polar regions are likely to be diminished in the summer period, while the build - up of ice in Tombaugh Regio may have endured for millions of years.

As both a movie - tie in and Olympic competition, the timing of Ice Age: Continental Drift — Arctic Games «release is nearly impeccable, even it's polar cap - based sporting recreations evoke the Winter games rather than the imminent summer competitions.

There have been substantial, sometimes rancorous, debates among polar bear researchers about this predator's prospects in a warming climate with less summer sea ice.

It is pushing for new oil and gas drilling in polar bear habitat while biologists for Interior Department, prodded by legal action, recommended the bear be given threatened status under the species act because of the warming of the Arctic and summer retreat of sea ice.

A team of scientists is pioneering new strategies for ensuring that polar bears can persist even as summer sea ice — a vital feeding platform — retreats under the climate change that is already in the pipeline no matter how aggressively societies tackle the greenhouse challenge.

Although again I challenge you to name even five polar scientists who do not think human - caused global warming is the dominant cause of «the increasing summer retreats of sea ice.»

Steven C. Amstrup, the federal biologist who led an analysis last year concluding that the world's polar bear population could shrink two thirds by 2050 under moderate projections for retreating summer sea ice, is once again in the field along Alaska's Arctic coast, studying this year's brood of cubs, yearlings and mothers.

Over all, open water has spread in the Arctic this summer nearly as much as it did last summer, when polar experts said the ice cap shrank far more than had been measured since satellites started scanning the region 30 years ago — and probably more than it had shrunk in a century or more.

Even with the increasing summer retreats of sea ice, which polar scientists say probably are being driven in large part by global warming caused by humans....

Ms. Gormezano is not a fan of the forecasting methods used by Dr. Amstrup to conclude that a two - thirds reduction in polar bears is possible midcentury if summer sea ice continues retreating.

Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months.

[UPDATE, 5/20: Natalie Angier has written a nice column on the relatively unheralded walrus, which — like the far more charismatic polar bear — is having a hard time as Arctic sea ice retreats earlier and farther each spring and summer and forms later in the boreal fall.

In an experimental cross-check, more than a dozen teams of polar ice experts tried issuing experimental forecasts of the sea ice as conditions evolved through the spring and summer.

I would guess summer warming would melt polar ice, leading to ice albedo feedback and global warming.

Artic sea ice summer disappearance: Abrupt (human scale), perhaps not catastrophic unless you're an Inuit or a polar bear (and yet antother definitional problem appears).

The pace of ice loss — both its extent and the amount of the older, thicker ice that survives from summer to summer — has been faster than most models predicted and clearly has, as a result, unnerved some polar researchers by revealing how much is unknown about ice behavior in a warming climate.

Historically, there had not been enough open water for polar bears in this region to swim the long distances we observed in these recent summers of extreme sea ice retreat.»

Even with this year's extreme loss, there's still a wide range of predictions among polar scientists of how soon the northernmost ocean will be «ice free» in late summer.

Three years after environmental groups sued to force the Interior Department to consider protecting polar bears under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush administration today listed the species as threatened — on track to be endangered by midcentury because of shrinking summer sea ice in a warming Arctic.

(Keep in mind that almost all Arctic sea ice researchers add a big caveat when talking of an «ice - free Arctic Ocean,» noting that a big region of thick floes north and west of Greenland will almost surely persist in summers through this century, which is one reason some scientists have proposed targeting polar bear conservation efforts there.)

Meeting in Tromso, Norway, representatives from the five signatories — the United States, Norway, Canada, Russia and Denmark — said that worldwide agreement and action would be needed to reduce the risk, driven by accumulating greenhouse gases, that polar bears would lose their sea - ice habitat in summers later this century.

A native person or polar bear wanders down to a beach during the summer and there isn't any ice to be seen.

Melting of glaciers and polar ice caps: Large ice formations, like glaciers and the polar ice caps, naturally melt back a bit each summer.

For polar bears much depends on having excess to the summer ice from a solid coastline.

Remember, polar ice gets very little sun in the summer, and none at all in the winter.

«Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,» claimed Professor Wieslaw Maslowski, described as researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School who was working with co-workers at NASA to come up with the now - thoroughly discredited forecasts about polar ice.

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice - free in summers within just 5 - 6 years.

Climate warming is reducing the availability of their ice habitat, especially in the spring when polar bears gain most of their annual fat reserves by consuming seal pups before coming ashore for the summer.

They contend polar bears are already being harmed by declines in summer sea ice coverage, or will be shortly.

Tagged 30 year baseline, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, climatology, Cryosphere Today, NSIDC, polar bear status, sea ice extent, summer sea ice

Tagged annual summer minimum, arctic sea ice, Beaufort Sea, body condition, Cherry, Chukchi, declining sea ice, Eastern Beaufort, good news, heavy sea ice, Hudson Bay, ice - free Arctic, litter size, loss of summer ice, Pilfold, polar bear, record low, Regehr, ringed seals, Rode, sea ice extent, Southern Beaufort, Stirling, summer ice minimum, summer sea ice, thick spring ice

Tagged Arctic, Beaufort, fall, habitat, Kaktovik, polar bear, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, summer, thick spring ice

Tagged Christine Graham, climate change, concerns about extinction, Daily Mail, David Rose, decline, global warming, GWPF, ice - free Arctic, IPCC, melting ice cap, observations, polar bears, polar bears thriving, predictions, sea ice loss, summer sea ice minimum

Tagged Alaska Science Center, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, females with radio collars, Regehr, Rode, satellite radio collars, summer ice minimum, summer sea ice, swimming polar bears, tracking polar bears by satellite, US Fish, us geological survey, USGS

This emphasizes the fact that the primary problem faced by Southern Beaufort sea polar bears is not scarce summer ice but by thick sea ice conditions in the spring.