Compilation: Lots of good polar bear/sea ice quotes here

Quote archive | polarbearscience

Featured Quote #3
Sea ice in the northern Chukchi Sea and western Beaufort Sea…”is thicker and melting slower than usual… First-year ice is 9 to 11 feet [2.7-3.3 meters] thick”. [July 26, 2012]
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Featured Quote #4
“Sea ice can be thin enough to avoid detection by satellite sensors but thick enough to stop ships.” Walt Meier, National Snow and Ice Data Center. Aug. 14, 2012.
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Featured Quote #6
In Northwest Greenland (near Thule), Kurt Burnham (of the High Arctic Institute) claims to have seen more bears in one summer than he has in his previous twenty. [Aug. 22, 2012]
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Featured Quote #7
“One 17-year-old female from western Hudson Bay with three cubs-of-the-year was handled in November, 1983 when she weighed 99 kg [218 lbs]. The following July she was without cubs, probably pregnant, and weighted 410 kg [910 lbs], a four-fold weight change in eight months.” Ramsay and Stirling 1988:615.
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Featured Quote #8
“The increase in the Svalbard polar bear population in recent years [1972 vs.1980], with consequently higher abundance of adult bears, may have increased cannibalism and predation upon cubs.” From Larsen (1985:325).
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Featured Quote #9
“the lifeblood of most polar bear research is jet fuel needed by helicopters stored in strategically placed caches.” From Derocher and Lynch 2012:107
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Featured Quote #10
“Nichol’s (1967) climatic reconstructions [western of Hudson Bay, Canada] show that the forest tundra margin was once 300 km farther north and that summer temperatures between 6000 and 3500 years ago were about 3 degrees C warmer than at present. [continues...] A cooling period occurred between 3500 and 1500 years ago, followed by a warming trend (the Medieval Warm Period), which lasted with minor fluctuations until 600 years ago. Cooler conditions have prevailed since that time. Whether we have begun a climatic cooling and are part way into the next glacial epoch, or whether the cooling trends are short term fluctuations remains to be seen.” Dredge 1992:14
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“Segregation by sex and age is apparently reinforced by intraspecific fighting. During tagging operations in August, 1969, [in W. Hudson Bay] six bears were observed with fresh wounds, and an adult male was found near the coast devouring an adult female and two cubs he had apparently killed the previous day..."
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Featured Quote #18
“Sea ice coverage varies greatly from one year to the next and from one regional location to the next. So, one summer may find thick impenetrable ice in a specific region—when the summer before, large areas were completely accessible.” Walt Meier, research scientist at NSIDC, Nov. 2, 2012.

[Via DB]