According to Andrew Derocher this morning, the last of his teams‘ tagged polar bears have come ashore in Western Hudson Bay, in the last week of August. That makes two years out of the last three when the tagged WH bears came ashore as late, or later than, they had done in 2009 (a very cold year when they were onshore by about 20/21 August), something Derocher failed to mention during a CBC Radio interview also published today.

Don’t forget this is the subpopulation that polar bear specialists use to model the future of all bears, everywhere in the Arctic but only use stale data from the 2000s because including more recent information would give a much more optimistic picture.

Meanwhile, no further reports from Churchill about problem bears: the last one issued was for the first week in August. Time will tell at freeze-up whether this will be yet another very good year for Western Hudson Bay bears.

Last bears to leave the ice

2020, at 22 August with a map dated 21 August (on the left) compared to 14 August the same year (note the emphasis on ‘unusual’ and the repetition of trend statistics up to 2014 — rather meaningless six years later — as is the reminder of a prediction that has failed to materialize, on top of the notation that this was only “one good year”):

2022, at 27 August with a map dated 26 August (no mention of “one good year doesen’t help much” or “coming ashore so late is unusual”, or that this date is even later than 2020):

Arctic sea ice conditions last week August

2020, 25 August [4.7mkm2]:

2022, 26 August [5.4mkm2]

via polarbearscience

August 27, 2022

Last WH polar bears ashore even later than 2009 as Hudson Bay finally becomes ice-free | polarbearscience