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      Sea ice directs changes in bowhead whale phenology through the Bering Strait

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          Abstract

          Background

          Climate change is warming the Arctic faster than the rest of the planet. Shifts in whale migration timing have been linked to climate change in temperate and sub-Arctic regions, and evidence suggests Bering–Chukchi–Beaufort (BCB) bowhead whales ( Balaena mysticetus) might be overwintering in the Canadian Beaufort Sea.

          Methods

          We used an 11-year timeseries (spanning 2009–2021) of BCB bowhead whale presence in the southern Chukchi Sea (inferred from passive acoustic monitoring) to explore relationships between migration timing and sea ice in the Chukchi and Bering Seas.

          Results

          Fall southward migration into the Bering Strait was delayed in years with less mean October Chukchi Sea ice area and earlier in years with greater sea ice area ( p = 0.04, r 2 = 0.40). Greater mean October–December Bering Sea ice area resulted in longer absences between whales migrating south in the fall and north in the spring ( p < 0.01, r 2 = 0.85). A stepwise shift after 2012–2013 shows some whales are remaining in southern Chukchi Sea rather than moving through the Bering Strait and into the northwestern Bering Sea for the winter. Spring northward migration into the southern Chukchi Sea was earlier in years with less mean January–March Chukchi Sea ice area and delayed in years with greater sea ice area ( p < 0.01, r 2 = 0.82).

          Conclusions

          As sea ice continues to decline, northward spring-time migration could shift earlier or more bowhead whales may overwinter at summer feeding grounds. Changes to bowhead whale migration could increase the overlap with ships and impact Indigenous communities that rely on bowhead whales for nutritional and cultural subsistence.

          Supplementary Information

          The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40462-023-00374-5.

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          Most cited references63

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          Scientists rise up against statistical significance

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            The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979

            In recent decades, the warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Numerous studies report that the Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the globe on average. Here we show, by using several observational datasets which cover the Arctic region, that during the last 43 years the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the globe, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in literature. We compared the observed Arctic amplification ratio with the ratio simulated by state-of-the-art climate models, and found that the observed four-fold warming ratio over 1979–2021 is an extremely rare occasion in the climate model simulations. The observed and simulated amplification ratios are more consistent with each other if calculated over a longer period; however the comparison is obscured by observational uncertainties before 1979. Our results indicate that the recent four-fold Arctic warming ratio is either an extremely unlikely event, or the climate models systematically tend to underestimate the amplification.
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              Continued increases in Arctic Ocean primary production

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                angela@szesciorka.com
                Journal
                Mov Ecol
                Mov Ecol
                Movement Ecology
                BioMed Central (London )
                2051-3933
                7 February 2023
                7 February 2023
                2023
                : 11
                : 8
                Affiliations
                GRID grid.4391.f, ISNI 0000 0001 2112 1969, Marine Mammal Institute, Hatfield Marine Science Center, , Oregon State University, ; 2030 SE Marine Science Drive, Newport, OR USA
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0016-2144
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0039-5025
                Article
                374
                10.1186/s40462-023-00374-5
                9903510
                36750903
                3f0bcd9f-a79a-45ab-8173-7f010844b4c0
                © The Author(s) 2023

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

                History
                : 16 September 2022
                : 1 February 2023
                Funding
                Funded by: National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs
                Award ID: 2138801
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000192, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
                Award ID: NA10OAR4320148
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001, National Science Foundation;
                Award ID: ARC-1107106
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: Russian-American Long-term Census of the Arctic
                Categories
                Research
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2023

                bering strait,bowhead whales,chukchi sea,climate change,migration timing,phenology,sea ice,western arctic

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