How Has Global Warming Affect Polar Bears – ‘Poster child for climate change’: Study predicts polar bears will die out within 80 years ‘Slim chance’ polar bears will survive, except for ‘one small population’ in high Arctic, study says

Polar bears may face extinction by the end of the century due to shrinking Arctic sea ice caused by climate change, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

How Has Global Warming Affect Polar Bears

Although the study did not predict that all polar bears will be completely extinct by 2100, it is estimated that 13 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations in the Arctic, which make up roughly 80% of the species, are likely to die out due to starvation and reproductive failure. The researchers said the estimate was “probably conservative” based on the current rate of ice loss, and predicted that some subpopulations would become extinct even sooner.

How The Effects Of Climate Change In Arctic Canada Are Shrinking Polar Bears

“There is very little chance that polar bears will persist anywhere in the world, except perhaps in the very high Arctic in one small subpopulation,” if global temperatures continue to rise at current levels, Peter Molnár, a professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and lead author of the study. he told The New York Times. Even if emissions are reduced slightly under the Paris climate agreement, “we will still, unfortunately, lose some of the population, especially some of the southernmost populations, through the loss of sea ice,” he said.

Shrinking sea ice is forcing polar bears to move onto land, leaving them further from food supplies for longer periods of time, the study said. A longer “leaning season” and declining reproduction “will threaten the persistence of all but a few High Arctic subpopulations by 2100,” the study said. “Moderate emission reductions extend persistence but are unlikely to prevent extinction of a particular subpopulation”.

“We previously knew that polar bears would eventually disappear if we didn’t stop the rise of greenhouse gases. But knowing when they start to disappear in different areas is critical to informing management and policy – and inspiring action,” Steven Amstrup, Polar’s chief scientist. Bears International and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “We find that modest emissions reductions can extend global persistence but are unlikely to prevent the extinction of several populations, highlighting the urgency of more ambitious emissions reductions.”

About 25,000 polar bears live in the Arctic. They live primarily on sea ice, so they can hunt seals. But because of the melting ice, more bears are forced onto land during the spring and summer. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ice during the summer months has shrunk by an average of 13% per decade since 1980. Many parts that used to have ice all year round now have no ice in the summer months.

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“You need sea ice to trap food,” Molnár said. “There is not enough food on earth to sustain the polar bear population.”

Polar bears can fast for months at a time, but the rate of ice melt suggests they will soon be forced to land on land for longer periods, meaning they will have to fast longer than they are capable of.

“Feeding on land is unlikely to occur at rates that shift the recruitment timeline and decline survival by more than a few years because foods that meet polar bears’ energy requirements are largely unavailable on land,” the study said. .

“There will come a time when you run out of energy,” said Molnár. “Not only do bears have to fast longer and need more energy to get through it, but it’s harder for them to store that energy.”

Climate Crisis: Polar Bears Face Extinction By 2100

The reduced energy will also affect other factors of the polar bear’s existence, such as finding a mate, which will cause a sharp decrease in the level of reproduction. Less energy can also affect the ability of bears to produce milk to feed their cubs.

“We showed that firstly we lose cub survival, so cubs will be born but the females won’t have enough body fat to produce milk to see them through the ice-free season,” Amstrup told the BBC. “Every one of us knows that we can only last so long without food. That’s a biological reality for all species.”

The study modeled the physical states of the bears and calculated the time they could fast reasonably quickly.

“By estimating how thin and how fat polar bears can be and modeling their energy consumption, we were able to calculate a threshold number of days that polar bears can fast before cub and/or adult survival rates begin to decline,” Molnar said in r. statement.

Polar Bears Numbers Will Decline Dramatically By 2050 Because Of Climate Change

“By crossing these fasting impact thresholds with the predicted future number of days that sea ice will be absent, we were able to predict when fasting impact thresholds will be exceeded in different parts of the Arctic,” said Cecilia Bitz, a climate scientist at the university. of Washington and co-author of the study.

“Polar bears have long been seen as harbingers of symptoms of climate change that will affect all life, including humans,” said Amstrup. “We know that floods, droughts and fires will become more frequent and more severe as the world continues to warm, but it is difficult to predict the timetable for such events… Showing how imminent the threat is to various polar bear populations is another reminder that , that we must act now to prevent the worst future problems we will all face.”

Andrew Derocher, a professor at the University of Alberta who studies polar bears, told The Times that the study’s findings “are very consistent with what we see” from observing the animals in the wild.

“The study clearly shows that polar bears will do better with less warming,” he said. “But whichever scenario you look at, there are serious concerns for the survival of the species.”

Canadian Polar Bears Near ‘bear Capital’ Dying At Fast Rate

Another study published in the journal PLOS ONE in 2016 found that polar bears in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska and western Canada were three times more likely to come ashore during the summer than in the 1980s. Bears now spend an average of 31 more days a year on land than three decades ago.

This contributed to a 40% decline in the polar bear population in the region. Bears in the Beaufort Sea also have lower weight, poorer body condition and lower cub survival than other similar subpopulations.

In Russia, authorities had to declare a state of emergency last year after dozens of starving polar bears overran a remote rural region called Novaya Zemlya.

“I have been in Novaya Zemlya since 1983, but there has never been such an invasion of polar bears before,” regional administration chief Zhiganshi Musin told reporters. “They are literally chasing people and going into the entrances of residential buildings.”

Heartbreaking Video Of Starving Polar Bear Stirs Controversy Among Conservationists

“Everyone understood that it could happen,” Mikhail Stishov, coordinator of the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic biodiversity project, told the Russian news agency. “Now bears are more and more often on the shores due to the absence of ice for a long time. They come to the coast where they get used to human habitation.”

Igor Derysh is the chief news editor. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Herald, and the Baltimore Sun. Some might consider the appearance of a polar bear at Newfoundland’s annual Glacier Festival as an auspicious omen. Others might see it as a serious result of global warming. But for the residents of St. Lunaire-Griquet, part of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, the arrival of a polar bear on the ice floe during the evening of June 10 had the most people thinking about how to keep their distance.

“They’re wild animals. As beautiful as they are, I wouldn’t want to get too close to them,” Thresa Burden, tourism and development officer for the city of St. Anthony, told the Globe and Mail. The bear spent some time wandering between shelters and along coast before finally jumping back into the water and swimming towards the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s not uncommon for bears to come ashore in the community, Burden told the Globe. But it is strange to see a bear appear so late in the spring.

Polar Bear Fact Sheet

The occurrence of a bear so late in the season immediately calls into question the role that global warming is playing in polar bear behavior. But Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta who studies polar bears, says global warming won’t push bears south, but will cause “bears to move north.” The appearance of a bear in St. Lunaire-Griquet is more a case of getting “in trouble because [he] was following [his] nose,” he says.

Derocher says the bear likely got lost and separated from the sea ice as it headed south to hunt. Many bears migrate south on drifting sea ice later in the season to hunt harp seals – they are abundant in the area – before returning north. The harp seal population has increased in recent years, Derocher says, which means the polar bear population, especially in Davis Strait—the area that includes the northern arm of the Labrador Sea between Greenland and Nunavut—is also

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