• Animals

Polar Bears Jeopardized by Drastic Habitat Loss; DOI Says ANWR Drilling Won’t Hurt Them

• ANWR
• Arctic
• endangered species
• Interior Department
• NOAA
• oil and gas
• oil and gas drilling
• sea ice

All but a few populations of polar bears found in the high Arctic could be extinct by 2100 due to the drastic loss of sea ice across their range, according to a study in the Journal Nature Climate Change published Monday.  Without ice, polar bears must survive on land, long distances from their food supplies, causing them to go hungry.

Why This Matters:  This study puts data behind the starving polar bear photo.  The U.S. population is one of the most threatened in the world because of the loss of ice.

• Climate Change

Arctic Melting Now “Locked In”

• Arctic
• carbon
• climate change
• methane
• permafrost
• sea ice
• thaw
• UNEP

According to a new report issued by the United Nations Environment Program, the Arctic is locked into extreme temperature increases because of greenhouse gasses already emitted and the heat already being stored in the ocean.  The Report, entitled Global Linkages – A graphic look at the changing Arctic, explains that winter temperatures in the Arctic will […]

• Ocean

Antarctica Now Melting Faster Than It Was In the 80’s

• Antarctica
• carbon dioxide
• climate change
• ice
• ice sheet
• melt
• pollutions
• sea ice

A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences delivered some sobering news on Monday — that Antarctica is losing ice at a  rate six times faster than it has in the past.  According to CNN, the rate of ice loss has increased each decade over the last 40 years — from a loss of 40 gigatons (a gigaton is one billion tons) per year from in the decade from 1979 to 1990 to a loss of 252 gigatons per year in the decade from 2009 to 2017.  And Axios explained that this finding is “important” because “previous studies had regarded that part of the continent as stable or not yet undergoing a net loss.”