Polar bear tracker update: The bears are on the move!

Follow three polar bear families as they navigate the Hudson Bay in search for food this winter. See where they go.
Just as global Environment Ministers start flying off to Cancun and the next round of crucial UN Climate Change negotiations, the Hudson Bay system has finally started to freeze, allowing those polar bears that have survived the 5 months or so ashore to once more access their main prey.
Also at this time, the climatologists have noted a very tight correlation between surface air temperature anomalies and lack of sea-ice cover in Arctic regions like Hudson Bay this year (see here for further details). Via the ‘Warm Arctic – Cold Continent’ effect, rapidly changing arctic weather systems like this are now known to be linked highly with abnormally cold and snowy weather in mid-latitude regions, such as northwest Europe. While the very late return of sea-ice is very bad news for our Hudson Bay polar bears, it is now acknowledged that this absence of a sea-ice ‘blanket’ over the warm body of Hudson Bay water, is simply allowing that accumulated thermal energy stored in the water to escape into the atmosphere – causing this big disruption to air temperatures and pressure systems, which then have a huge influence on temperate regions’ weather. Polar bears are truly acting as the ‘canary’ in the proverbial coal mine.

A female Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) walking with her two young cubs near Churchill, Manitoba, Canada (c) David Jenkins/WWF-Canada