Susan Crockford
Whereas Arctic sea ice has declined remarkably since 1979, Antarctic ice has been unexpectedly steady. Consultants acknowledge that current local weather fashions–which assume that CO2 emissions drive world sea ice loss–had predicted Antarctic sea ice would have declined over the past a number of a long time–and would decline much more sooner or later. They’ve lastly admitted they had been improper.
John Turner (British Antarctic Survey) and Josifino Comiso (NASA) in a NATURE paper in 2017:
“Present local weather fashions wrestle to simulate the seasonal and regional variability seen in Antarctic sea ice.“
A brand new mannequin launched earlier this yr suggests the nearly steady Antarctic sea ice cowl that has existed over the past 4 a long time can now be anticipated to proceed for nearly one other three a long time, till at the least 2050, and decline solely slowly after that (Rackow et al. 2022).
Nonetheless, emperor penguin researchers used the outdated flawed fashions to get the species listed as ‘threatened’ within the US only a few months in the past as a result of predicted sea ice loss (Jenouvrier et al. 2009; Jenouvrier et al. 2020; Trathan et al 2020; USFWS 2022).
In different phrases, it’s not simply that penguin researchers picked essentially the most pessimistic and completely implausible ‘worst case’ state of affairs to make their case, as polar bear specialist so like to do (Crockford 2019; Hausfather and Peters 2020): sea ice consultants now say these outdated sea ice fashions are fairly ineffective for predicting future sea ice circumstances and have recognized this for greater than a decade (Blanchard-Wrigglesworth et al. 2021, 2022; Comiso et al. 2017; Turner and Comiso 2017; Turner and Overland 2009; Turner et al. 2013).
Sea ice consultants knew the fashions had been improper about Antarctic sea ice and CO2–and wrote about their issues within the scientific literature–but penguin biologists ignored that proof and continued to insist that penguins are doomed to near-extinction by future sea ice loss within the Southern Ocean. See graphic under, from Jenouvrier et al. 2020:
ESA safety for emperors was granted by US Fish & Wildlife on 25 October 2022, despite the fact that a brand new Antarctic sea ice mannequin was printed greater than eight months earlier, on 2 February 2022. This implies each the petitioners for the ESA itemizing and the USFWS ignored years of proof supplied by trusted consultants that Antarctic sea ice fashions weren’t match for goal plus a extra believable choice supplied, then referred to as all of it “finest out there science.”
The brand new mannequin might also be crap however that doesn’t warrant ignoring stable proof that the outdated one was severely flawed.
The graph under is from the Turner and Comiso paper and exhibits the discrepancy of concern: summer time Arctic ice vs. Antarctic winter ice (September for each) from 1979-2017, with max for Antarctic ice hitting 20.11mkm2 in 2014 (when Arctic ice was its sixth lowest at 5.02mkm2):
That graph ends in 2017, now 5 years in the past. Beneath was the extent at 19 September 2022, close to the utmost for that yr, ultimately reaching 18.19 mkm2. Loads of ice for emperor penguins, who uniquely lay their eggs and lift hatchlings over the winter/spring, totally on land-fast ice:
As an apart, I couldn’t assist however discover that emperor penguin researchers working within the Antarctic give attention to winter sea ice with regard to future well being and survival whereas polar bear specialists and different Arctic biologists are most involved about summer time sea ice loss. In each instances, the ice-dependent species of concern require sea ice within the winter/spring for reproducing and/or feeding. The distinction is that summer time sea ice within the Antarctic has all the time nearly disappeared over the summer time (down to fifteen% or lower than winter extent) and nobody pretends that any Antarctic animal requires summer time sea ice for survival. Odd, that.
References
BirdLife Worldwide. 2020. Aptenodytes forsteri. The IUCN Pink Record of Threatened Species 2019: e.T22697752A132600320. Downloaded on 26 October 2022. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22697752/157658053
Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, E., I. Eisenman, S. Zhang, et al. 2022. New views on the enigma of increasing Antarctic sea ice, Eos 103. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EO220076.
Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, E., Roach, L.A., Donohoe, A. and Ding, Q. 2021. Affect of winds and Southern Ocean SSTs on Antarctic sea ice traits and variability. Journal of Local weather 34(3):949–965. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0386.1.
Hausfather, Z. and Peters, G.P. 2020. Emissions – the ‘enterprise as traditional’ story is deceptive [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620
Jenouvrier, S., Caswell, H., Barbraud, C., Holland, M., Stroeve, J. and Weimerskirch, H. 2009. Demographic fashions and IPCC local weather projections predict the decline of an emperor penguin inhabitants. Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Science USA 106: 1844-1847. Accessible right here: https://www.researchgate.web/publication/23951047_Demographic_models_and_IPCC_climate_projections_predict_the_decline_of_an_Emperor_penguin_population
Jenouvrier, S. et al. 2020. The Paris Settlement goals will seemingly halt future declines of emperor penguins. World Change Biology 26(3): 1170-1184. [paywalled] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14864
Rackow, T., Danilov, S., Goessling, H.F. et al. 2022. Delayed Antarctic sea-ice decline in high-resolution local weather change simulations. Nature Communications 13:637. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28259-y
Trathan, P.N. et al. 2020. The emperor penguin – Susceptible to projected charges of warming and sea ice loss. Organic Conservation 241:108216. [open access] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108216
Turner, J. and Comiso, J. 2017. Resolve Antarctica’s sea-ice puzzle. Nature 547:275-277. https://www.nature.com/articles/547275a
Turner, J. and Overland, J. 2009. Contrasting local weather change within the two polar areas. Polar Analysis 28(2):146-164. https://doi.org/10.3402/polar.v28i2.6120
Turner, J., Bracegirdle, T.J., Phillips, T. et al. 2013. An preliminary evaluation of Antarctic sea ice extent within the CMIP5 fashions. Journal of Local weather 26(5):1473-1484.
USFWS 2022. ‘Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Crops; Threatened Species Standing for Emperor Penguin With Part 4(d) Rule.’ Federal Register 87(206):64700-64720.
