Canadian Harp Seals may have “read” the predictions of the coming decades of stabilization of global temperatures and perhaps some cooling. Animals like the Harp Seal have experienced many millions of years of climatic change and, through the complex processes of evolution and natural selection, may have developed an ability to sense coming changes.

This is from The Boston Channel:

Small numbers of juvenile harp seals are typically found each winter stranded along the coast of the northeastern United States. But this year, well over 100 adult harp seals – not juveniles – have been spotted … In some areas they’re reporting three times the normal number of sightings … we’ve had four sightings of adult harp seals in North Carolina, which we’ve never had before. We typically don’t see them that far south. …

For now, there is no clear explanation for why more seals are showing up in U.S. waters, said Gordon Waring, who heads the seal program at NOAA’s fisheries science center in Woods Hole, Mass. They could be making their way south because of climatic conditions or perhaps in search of food, Waring said. “These animals are known to wander a lot,” Waring said. “Whether they’re following food down or whatever, we don’t really have a good understanding of it.” Garron said she and the seal organizations will look at environmental trends, such as water temperatures, to see if it’s influencing the harp seal range. Regardless of the reason, biologists are taking notice, Doughty said.

Read more from The Boston Channel here.

Here is a 2009 WUWT item about Henrik Svensmark and his Global Cosmic Ray theory of how reduced Solar activity leads to cooling periods. Svensmark says “In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable …”

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