A new study suggests that before the end of the century, mother polar bears in this region may no longer be able to find the deep snowbanks they need to dig dens. Megan Liu, a high school student and research intern working with Glen Liston at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, presented the preliminary
-- Polar bears are born into the Arctic winter blind, hairless, and no bigger than a guinea pig. For three months while storms rage and temperatures fall below -40 F, the cubs stay snug and warm in their mothers’ dens. But if current trends continue, newborn cubs along Alaska’s northern coast may instead perish out in the cold.
Scientists have long known that climate change is hurting polar bears, but most research has focused on the loss of their sea ice hunting grounds, said Steven Amstrup, who oversaw polar bear research in Alaska for the U.S. Geological Survey for 30 years and now serves as chief scientist for Polar Bears International. Polar bears catch seals at breathing holes in the ice, so when there’s not enough sea ice, they are at risk of starvation.
In the new study, Liu, Liston and their colleagues used the same model to estimate where snowdrifts would form in the future. They found that in the worst climate change scenario, polar bear denning habitat on Alaska’s Beaufort Sea coast would decrease by an average of 97% by the year 2100. The second-worst scenario was not much better, with average declines of 94%. In both cases, the model suggested there would be periods of a decade or more with no suitable denning habitat at all.
The new study focused on the Beaufort Sea coast, where declines in sea ice are already hitting bears hard. Stirling, Amstrup and colleagues have estimated that polar bear abundance in that region fell by 25%-50% in the first decade of the 20th century.
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