‘Wholly Unexpected’: These Polar Bears Can Survive With Less Sea Ice

By -
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/climate/climate-change-polar-bears.html

By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: Scientists have identified a distinct subpopulation of polar bears in southeastern Greenland that, in an area with little sea ice, survive by hunting from ice that breaks off glaciers. The discovery suggests a way that a small number of bears might survive as warming continues and more of the sea ice that they normally depend on disappears. But the researchers and other polar experts cautioned that grave risks to the overall polar bear population in the Arctic remain and will only be lessened by cutting greenhouse gas emissions to curb global warming. The subpopulation, believed to number several hundred animals, was identified during a multiyear study of what was thought to be a single population of bears along Greenland’s entire 1,800-mile-long east coast. ...Overall, there are an estimated 26,000 polar bears around the Arctic, in 19 officially designated subpopulations. The animals live on the seasonal sea ice, hunting their primary prey, seals, as the seals bask on the ice or come up for air through breathing holes. But the rapid warming of the Arctic linked to human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases has reduced the extent and duration of sea-ice cover.… See also article in Science Magazine. 

Popular posts from this blog

Lost history of Antarctica revealed in octopus DNA

By -
https://www.science.org/content/article/lost-history-antarctica-revealed-octopus-dna By ERIK STOKSTAD .  Excerpt: Some 100,000 years ago, scientists believe Antarctica’s massive western ice sheet collapsed, temporarily opening waterways between a trio of seas surrounding the continent. New evidence for that scenario comes from a surprising source: octopus DNA. ...About 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, a warm spell called the last interglacial gave our planet a brief break in between several million years of ice ages. The average temperature of the planet was about 0.5°C warmer than it is today—and climate projections predict it will be again within decades. The global sea level was also 5 meters to 10 meters higher than current levels. Many scientists believe  the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and consequent melting could have been a primary reason . ...The findings are consistent with growing geological evidence supporting the ice sheet collapse....
Read more

Where Glaciers Melt, the Rivers Run Red

By -
By Mitra Taj , The New York Times.  Excerpt: As the glaciers of South America retreat, the supply of freshwater is dwindling and its quality is getting worse. Dionisia Moreno, a 70-year-old Indigenous farmer, still remembers when Shallap River, nearly 13,000 feet up in the Cordillera Blanca, brought crystal clear water brimming with trout to her village, Jancu. “People and animals alike could drink the water without suffering,” she said. “Now the water is red. No one can drink it.”....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/science/peru-glaciers-water-pollution.html . 
Read more

The first people on Tasmania brought fire and forever changed the land

By -
By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: More than 41,000 years ago, humans traversed a strip of land that once joined the mainland of Australia to what is today the island of Tasmania, called Lutruwita by its Indigenous inhabitants today. The first humans to reach this land brought a tool they used to transform the landscape and that left the first lasting marks of their presence: fire. Thanks to layers of sediment that formed year by year along the bottom of a lake on a small island off the northeastern tip of Lutruwita, scientists have for the first time chronicled the region’s history of vegetation spanning more than 50,000 years. They found  a surge in fires starting about 41,600 years ago , the researchers report today in Science Advances, the same time as falling sea levels opened a dry corridor allowing humans to migrate to the island. ...The findings come at a time of growing interest in reviving a traditional burning culture on Lutruwita. Aboriginal communities a...
Read more