“Sea ice is to the Arctic ecosystem what soil is for the forest,” says Flavio Lehner, a climate scientist at Cornell University and Polar Bears International. “Rapid changes like these will affect all sea ice-dependent fauna and flora, from tiny under-ice algae to top predators like polar bears.”

But an existing technology modified to spot the white, fluffy bears may be able to help reduce that threat: portable radar units to warn communities that a bear is in the vicinity. Polar Bears International (PBI), an organization that supports research on and conservation of polar bears and sea ice, has been at the forefront of developing and testing such systems—nicknamed bear-dar—for the last several years, and envisages a number of scenarios in which they could be of use.