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January 29, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Svalbard\u2019s polar bears are showing remarkable resilience to climate change<\/p>\n These polar bears appear to be maintaining their physical health despite the loss of sea ice\u2014their preferred hunting grounds<\/p>\n By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n A sedated polar bear lies on the ice with its cub huddled against it.<\/p>\n Jon Aars\/Norwegian Polar Institute<\/p>\n Polar bears are the poster children of climate change\u2014and for good reason. These giant bears hunt, mate and spend their days hanging out on Arctic sea ice, which is rapidly disappearing as the climate warms. But some polar bears, it seems, are far more resilient than we realized: new research suggests that in one region, the bears are adapting to the declining sea ice.<\/p>\n Researchers took more than 1,000 body measurements from 770 polar bears over 24 years around Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Barents Sea\u2014an area that has seen an especially acute decline in sea ice over the decades. By 2019, the region\u2019s annual sea ice season shriveled to more than two months shorter than what it was 24 years prior.<\/p>\n Yet the bears showed no decline in their body condition between 2000 and 2019\u2014even as sea ice in their area disappeared. The findings were published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n That flew in the face of what Jon Aars, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute and lead author of the paper, and his team expected. They hypothesized that the Svalbard polar bears\u2019 health would wane over the study period. Tracking each bear over the ice with helicopters and periodically darting them to take body measurements on the ground, the researchers were able to estimate the animals\u2019 overall physical health\u2014a metric called body condition index, or BCI.<\/p>\n Researchers record the mouth measurements of an anesthetized polar bear. Recapture of bears marked in previous years is important for obtaining accurate data on survival and reproduction.<\/p>\n Jon Aars\/Norwegian Polar Institute<\/p>\n To Aars\u2019s surprise, the polar bears were in \u201cfairly good\u201d condition, even recovering from a drop in BCI from the 1990s to 2000\u2014the opposite of what he and his team had anticipated.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say the bears were totally unaffected by the loss of sea ice; some had relocated den areas or shifted their habitats north to follow the receding ice, Aars says. And of course, it\u2019s hard to know whether the polar bears would be in even better condition if it weren\u2019t for climate change.<\/p>\n While what the team observed on Svalbard may be \u201cuseful\u201d for studying other areas with similar ecosystems, Aars cautions that the findings don\u2019t mean that all the tens of thousands of polar bears across the Arctic are in equally good shape.<\/p>\n Still, what gives? Why are the Svalbard bears doing so well? Aars and his colleagues aren\u2019t sure, but they think it may have something to do with changes in the polar bears\u2019 diet. It could be that, with less ice, seals \u201caggregate\u201d on the ice that remains and are thus easier to hunt or that the bears are relying more on walrus carcasses or reindeer for food.<\/p>\n Three polar bear cubs gather around their tranquilized mother. She had a litter of three cubs \u2014 an unusual brood size \u2014 and the smallest cub only weighed five kilograms.<\/p>\n Jon Aars\/Norwegian Polar Institute<\/p>\n Lori Quakenbush, a researcher at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game\u2019s Arctic Marine Mammal Program, who was not involved in the study, says that polar bears are \u201cpart of a \u2018complex relationship\u2019 that includes habitat, multiple prey species, their ability as predators and their ability to store energy.\u201d The new findings are similar to separate observations of a group of bears off Alaska and Russia, the Chukchi Sea subpopulation, which has similarly held strong despite \u201csubstantial\u201d sea ice decline, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cWith continued monitoring of these and other subpopulations, we will likely learn more about the capabilities of polar bears as a species,\u201d Quakenbush says.<\/p>\n While resilient, polar bears\u2019 futures remain uncertain. It\u2019s unclear what Svalbard will look like in five, 10 or 20 years, Aars says. Someday the polar bears might hit a tipping point\u2014and with continued sea ice loss, the bears\u2019 condition will eventually decline.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the good news is that we are not there yet,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n A polar bear pictured standing on sea ice in the golden hour.<\/p>\n Trine Lise Sviggum Helgerud\/Norwegian Polar Institute<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 29, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Svalbard\u2019s polar bears are showing remarkable resilience to climate change These polar bears appear to be maintaining their physical health despite the loss of sea ice\u2014their preferred hunting grounds By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron A sedated polar bear lies on the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[8630,270,186,12315,4617,1592,7333,22608],"class_list":{"0":"post-43117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-bears","9":"tag-change","10":"tag-climate","11":"tag-polar","12":"tag-remarkable","13":"tag-resilience","14":"tag-showing","15":"tag-svalbards"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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