Can Antarctic sea-ice extent be determined from whaling records?

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Vaughan, Stephen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2000
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Antarctic; Antarc*; Polar Record; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400016831; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400016831

Summery The subject of retreating global sea-ice extent is a matter of grave concern, and any new method that promises reliable information about past ice-extent parameters must be welcomed. However, the method proposed by De la Mare should be viewed with caution for four reasons. First, his predictions of sea-ice extent do not correspond with known observations of sea-ice extent from research published in 1936 and 1972. Second, his predictions correlate much more closely with the whale-sighting data recorded by Hansen (1936). Third, since Hansen's sea-ice extent data do not correspond closely with his whalesighting data, it must be questioned whether whale-based data should be used for retrospective predictions relating to sea-ice extent. And finally, information from the IWC indicates that De la Mare's datasets are not considered accurate. Predicting sea-ice edge extent is complex, and, it would seem, a purely biological approach is not necessarily the most accurate method to adopt.