Sea Ice

ANCHORAGE - In what some scientists see as another alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in extraordinary numbers. The deaths took place during the late summer and fall on the Russian side of the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Russia. "It was a pretty sobering year - tough on walruses," said Joel Garlach-Miller, a walrus specialist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

"To the Arctic 3D," the latest IMAX nature documentary from Warner Brothers, stars Meryl Streep as a real live polar bear. OK, I made that up. But do any of us doubt that she could have played the mama bear if she had wanted to, with a growl every bit as convincing as her Oscar-winning Margaret Thatcher? Instead, Streep merely narrates this film — straight on, doing her best with pious lines aimed at Prius owners — and we are left to wonder what she might have made of a script that was a better match for the unforced drama of its cinematography.

HOUSTON -- Arctic sea ice in winter is melting far faster than before, two NASA studies reported yesterday, a new and alarming trend researchers say threatens the ocean's delicate ecosystem. Scientists point to the sudden and rapid melting as a sure sign of man-made global warming. "It has never occurred before ," said Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in a phone interview. "It is alarming. . . . This winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect.

Alaska polar bears are losing their fur and U.S. Geological Survey scientists don't know why. In the past two weeks, nine of 33 bears checked by scientists in the southern Beaufort Sea region near Barrow were found to have alopecia — loss of fur — and skin lesions, said Tony DeGange, chief of the biology office at the USGS Science Center in Anchorage. Three of four bears inspected Thursday near Kaktovik showed the symptoms as well. Scientists have been collecting blood and tissue samples from the afflicted bears, but they do not know the cause or the significance of the...

"To the Arctic 3D," the latest IMAX nature documentary from Warner Brothers, stars Meryl Streep as a real live polar bear. OK, I made that up. But do any of us doubt that she could have played the mama bear if she had wanted to, with a growl every bit as convincing as her Oscar-winning Margaret Thatcher? Instead, Streep merely narrates this film — straight on, doing her best with pious lines aimed at Prius owners — and we are left to wonder what she might have made of a script that was a better match for the unforced drama of its cinematography.

WASHINGTON - With global warming shrinking Arctic sea ice that polar bears depend upon for survival, the United States is seeking to remove another major threat: international trade in the bears’ fur and other parts. In a proposal filed this week, the Interior Department asked other countries to support a ban on the commercial trade of polar bears and to strictly regulate trophy hunting. The request would give the bear the strictest protection afforded under an international convention to protect endangered species.

FRANKFURT - Two German merchant ships have traversed the fabled Northeast Passage after global warming and melting ice opened a route from South Korea along Russia’s Arctic coast to Siberia. The merchant ships MV Beluga Fraternity and MV Beluga Foresight arrived this week in Yamburg, Siberia, their owner Beluga Shipping GmbH said yesterday. They traveled from Ulsan, South Korea, in late July to Siberia by way of the Northeast Passage, a sea lane that, in years past, was avoided because of its heavy ice floes.

A Russian tanker that brought fuel to an iced-in Alaska town is heading back to open water — once it gets through miles of sea ice. Coast Guard spokesman Adam De Rocher says its icebreaker, Healy, and tanker Renda were about 100 miles south of Nome on Sunday. He says they left the town on Alaska's western coast on Friday. The icebreaker led the Renda to Nome by cutting a path through Bering Sea ice, allowing the delivery of 1.3 million gallons of fuel. Nome would have run out by spring after a November storm prevented its last...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a “critical habitat’’ for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas. The total, which includes large areas of sea ice off the Alaska coast, is about 13,000 square miles less than in a preliminary plan released last year. Tom Strickland, Interior assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks, said the designation would help polar bears stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest...

WASHINGTON - Polar bears are swimming longer distances because of melting sea ice, according to a new study conducted with satellite tracking devices. The research, presented July 19 by Anthony Pagano, a US Geological Survey biologist, at the International Bear Association Conference, identified 50 long-distance swims by adult female polar bears between 2004 and 2009 in the southern Beaufort and Chukchi seas. "Climate change is pulling the sea ice out from under polar bears' feet, forcing some to swim longer distances to find food and habitat," said Geoff York, a polar bear...

Advocacy groups have set up a webcam to let viewers worldwide follow the development of a three-month-old polar bear cub in a Danish wildlife park. The camera by Bozeman-based Polar Bears International, the Scandinavian Wildlife Park and The Annenberg Foundation's explore.org went live Monday to coincide with International Polar Bear Day. The camera streams for two hours each day, between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. EST, the time when Siku romps around outside near a pond in the nearly 280,000 square-foot park.

A Russian tanker that brought fuel to an iced-in Alaska town is heading back to open water — once it gets through miles of sea ice. Coast Guard spokesman Adam De Rocher says its icebreaker, Healy, and tanker Renda were about 100 miles south of Nome on Sunday. He says they left the town on Alaska's western coast on Friday. The icebreaker led the Renda to Nome by cutting a path through Bering Sea ice, allowing the delivery of 1.3 million gallons of fuel. Nome would have run out by spring after a November storm prevented its last pre-winter fuel delivery.

A Coast Guard cutter is preparing for the departure of a Russian fuel tanker from an iced-in Alaska town. Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley said Friday that the Healy has started breaking ice to free itself and then will create a pathway for the fuel tanker to leave Nome. The icebreaker plans to lead the fuel tanker back through hundreds of miles of sea ice and to open ocean, where the tanker will head for Russia. The Healy then will head for its homeport in Seattle after a brief stop in Dutch Harbor.

Discovery Channel's documentary series "Frozen Planet" will premiere March 18, and will encompass seven episodes including a program on climate change hosted by David Attenborough. On that seventh episode, the famed British naturalist will investigate what rising temperatures will mean for the planet and life on it. The network made the announcement Tuesday. "Frozen Planet" is described as "the ultimate portrait of our Earth's polar regions. " A co-production of Discovery Channel and BBC, it was four years in the making and comes from the team behind "Planet Earth,"...

The old hunter was troubled by the foreigners encroaching on his Inuit people's frozen lands. "The Inuit say that they are going to heat the 'siku' (the sea ice) to make it melt. There will be almost no more winter," the elder says of the southerners in Jean Malaurie's "Last Kings of Thule," the French explorer's classic account of a year in the Arctic. The year was 1951. A lifetime later, another Inuit hunter looks out at Disko Bay from this island's rocky fringe and remembers driving his dogsled team over the solid glitter of the siku all the way to Ilulissat, a town 90...

WASHINGTON - Polar bears are swimming longer distances because of melting sea ice, according to a new study conducted with satellite tracking devices. The research, presented July 19 by Anthony Pagano, a US Geological Survey biologist, at the International Bear Association Conference, identified 50 long-distance swims by adult female polar bears between 2004 and 2009 in the southern Beaufort and Chukchi seas. "Climate change is pulling the sea ice out from under polar bears' feet, forcing some to swim longer distances to find food and habitat,"...

WASHINGTON - An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by the Associated Press.

ANCHORAGE — The federal government yesterday proposed listing two seals that depend on sea ice as threatened species because of the projected loss of ice from climate warming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will seek to list ringed seals found in the Arctic Basin and the North Atlantic and two populations of bearded seals in the Pacific Ocean as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Ringed seals are the main prey of polar bears, which were listed as threatened by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2008.

WASHINGTON - A federal judge yesterday backed a finding by government scientists that global warming threatens the survival of the polar bear. US District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that a May 2008 decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to place the bear on the endangered species list because of melting sea ice was rational, given the facts and best available science. Environmental groups had sued, saying the polar bear needed more protection under the Endangered Species Act. Hunting groups and the state of Alaska, then under the leadership of Governor Sarah Palin, argued that the bear...

STOCKHOLM — Arctic ice is melting faster than expected and could raise the average global sea level by as much as five feet this century, an authoritative new report suggests. The study by the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, or AMAP, is one of the most comprehensive updates on climate change in the Arctic, and builds on a similar assessment in 2005. The full report will be delivered to foreign ministers of the eight Arctic nations next week, but an executive summary including the key findings was obtained by the Associated Press...