Greenland ice sheet meltwater runoff has been increasing in recent decades, especially in the southwest and the northeast. To determine the impact of this accelerating meltwater flux on Baffin Bay, we examine eight numerical experiments using an ocean‐sea ice model: Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean. Enhanced runoff causes shoreward increasing sea surface height and strengthens the stratification in Baffin Bay. The changes in sea surface height reduces the southward transport through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and strengthens the gyre circulation within Baffin Bay. The latter leads to further freshening of surface waters as it produces a larger northward surface freshwater transport across Davis Strait. Increasing the meltwater runoff leads to a warming and shallowing of the west Greenland Irminger water on the northwest Greenland shelf. These warmer waters can now more easily enter fjords on the Greenland coast and thus provide additional heat to accelerate the melting of marine‐terminating glaciers.

BackgroundSea ice across the Arctic is declining and altering physical characteristics of marine ecosystems. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have been identified as vulnerable to changes in sea ice conditions. We use sea ice projections for the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from 2006 – 2100 to gain insight into the conservation challenges for polar bears with respect to habitat loss using metrics developed from polar bear energetics modeling.Principal FindingsShifts away from multiyear ice to annual ice cover throughout the region, as well as lengthening ice-free periods, may become critical for polar bears before the end of the 21st century with projected warming. Each polar bear population in the Archipelago may undergo 2–5 months of ice-free conditions, where no such conditions exist presently. We identify spatially and temporally explicit ice-free periods that extend beyond what polar bears require for nutritional and reproductive demands.Conclusions/SignificanceUnder business-as-usual climate projections, polar bears may face starvation and reproductive failure across the entire Archipelago by the year 2100.

The primary habitat of polar bears is sea ice, but in Western Hudson Bay (WH), the seasonal ice cycle forces polar bears ashore each summer. Survival of bears on land in WH is correlated with breakup and the ice-free season length, and studies suggest that exceeding thresholds in these variables will lead to large declines in the WH population. To estimate when anthropogenic warming may have progressed sufficiently to threaten the persistence of polar bears in WH, we predict changes in the ice cycle and the sea ice concentration (SIC) in spring (the primary feeding period of polar bears) with a high-resolution sea ice-ocean model and warming forced with 21st century IPCC greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenarios: B1 (low), A1B (medium), and A2 (high). We define critical years for polar bears based on proposed thresholds in breakup and ice-free season and we assess when ice-cycle conditions cross these thresholds. In the three scenarios, critical years occur more commonly after 2050. From 2001 to 2050, 2 critical years occur under B1 and A2, and 4 under A1B; from 2051 to 2100, 8 critical years occur under B1, 35 under A1B and 41 under A2. Spring SIC in WH is high (>90%) in all three scenarios between 2001 and 2050, but declines rapidly after 2050 in A1B and A2. From 2090 to 2100, the mean spring SIC is 84 (±7)% in B1, 56 (±26)% in A1B and 20 (±13)% in A2. Our predictions suggest that the habitat of polar bears in WH will deteriorate in the 21st century. Ice predictions in A1B and A2 suggest that the polar bear population may struggle to persist after ca. 2050. Predictions under B1 suggest that reducing GHG emissions could allow polar bears to persist in WH throughout the 21st century.

Baffin Bay is a small marginal basin between Greenland and the Canadian Arctic (Figure 1a). It is approximately 550 km east-west and 1,400 km north-south, with broad shelves on the Greenland side and a deep central region (Tang et al., 2004). Based on two distinct periods of mooring observations in 2003-2006 and 2007-2009, net southward fluxes from the Arctic Ocean through Nares Strait were 0.71 0.09  and 1 03 0 11 . .