Polar bear numbers will decline as the Arctic ice melts SeppFriedhuber/iStock

Climate change and its effect on the Arctic sea could cause polar bear numbers to fall by a third by 2050, according to worrying research by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska.

The study, led by Eric Regehr, shows there is a 70 per cent chance the global polar bear population, estimated at 26,000, will decline by more than 30 per cent over the next 35 years.


As climate change causes global temperature to increase and the polar ice caps to melt, it will affect the population numbers of the bears. They depend on sea ice to live, using it as a floating platform to hunt seals.

The study combined 35 years of satellite data on Arctic sea ice with all known shifts in 19 distinct polar bear groupings across four large ‘eco-zones’, scattered across the Arctic. This allowed the scientists to project three population scenarios for polar bears up to the mid-21st century.

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The first scenario projected a proportional decline in sea ice and polar bears, as a result of global warming. The second and third scenarios predicted by Regher and his team matched sea ice projections with available data about changes in specific polar bear populations spanning the last ten years.

Averaging all three projections, there is a 70 percent chance that polar bear numbers will drop by a third in the next 35-41 years. The study was published in the Royal Society’s Biology Letters.

This week it was announced that sea ice off Antarctica and in the Arctic is at record lows for this time of year. Arctic sea ice, which usually expands in winter, is at a record low of 10.25 million square kilometres (3.96m square miles). Anders Levermann, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters that the low sea ice is a result of global warming and “an extraordinary departure from the norm”.

According to current trends, the Arctic could see its first ice-free summers sometime in the 2030s.


Penguins are being affected by the changes in sea ice too. Earlier this year, a study by the University of Delaware announced the penguin population may drop by 60 per cent by the end of the century because of the warming of glaciers in Antarctica.

The Paris climate change agreement came into force on November 4, ratified by 55 countries with a combined 55 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, with the goal to reduce said emissions.

As part of the agreement, the countries involved will aim to keep the increase in global average temperature under 2°C above pre-industrial levels. An attempt by governments to reduce emissions would help reduce the risks and impacts of climate change but until we start to see the benefit of the agreement, the polar bears and penguins will be the ones to suffer.