Polar Bears Figure (IMAGE)
Caption
Cumulative post-1979 greenhouse gas emissions are shown along the bottom axis. The vertical axis is the number of days that polar bear must fast without access to sea ice as a hunting platform. The results show that regions in Hudson Bay (right columns), which had ice-free months even before 1979, have only slightly longer fasting seasons today. The more enclosed waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas (left columns) have experienced a dramatic increase in the number of days that polar bears must fast, and their recruitment failure, or failure to raise offspring, has also risen dramatically. All four populations now have a recruitment failure above zero, meaning their populations are in decline.
Credit
S. Amstrup and C. Bitz/Science
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