Media’s Horribly Dishonest Antarctica Propaganda

Attempting to reinforce the climate crisis narrative, a recent high temperature record in Antarctica has been misleadingly ballyhooed as an example of global warming by the world’s largest media outlets – New York Times, BBC, the Guardian, etc.  Although the NY Times tries to sell their paper with the slogan “The Truth is Worth It”, their misleading articles suggest you should spend your money elsewhere.  These media giants seem more intent on scaring the public and manufacturing a false climate crisis, than educating the public about the real physics that cause weather changes causing Antarctica’s temperature record!

The NY Times wrote,  “Antarctica, the coldest, windiest and driest continent on Earth, set a record high temperature on Thursday, underscoring global warming” But the fact that Antarctica is the coldest place on earth, has nothing to do with a  temperature record at a single weather station, Esperanza. Esperanza is located at the warmest, most northerly part of the mountainous Antarctica peninsula. Esperanza is most sensitive to El Nino warming. It most sensitive to the southward flow of warm moist subtropical winds.  And Esperanza’s topography always amplifies temperatures when winds from the northwest cause foehn wind events. What happened at Esperanza has nothing to do with Antarctica’s overall climate trends, never mind any global warming trend.

The Guardian wrote, Antarctica “is one of the fastest warming places on earth, heating by almost 3°C [5.4°F] over the past 50 years”. However, the Guardian hides the fact they are using zombie data. Recent research shows a cooling trend since the year 2000 and that contradicts any CO₂ driven global warming theory.

In the 2016 peer-reviewed paper “Absence of 21st century Warming on Antarctic Peninsula consistent with Natural Variability”,  Antarctic climate experts documented that from 1979–1997, Antarctic had indeed experienced the globe’s fastest warming temperatures, increasing by 3.2 °C [5.8 °F] per century. In contrast, from 1999–2014, temperatures then decreased at a rate 4.7 °C [8.5 °F} per century. This strong cooling trend is rarely reported or referred to by media alarmists. Dishonestly, the Guardian ignores the recent cooling trends to suggest a recent one day Esperanza temperature record is “a sign that warming in Antarctica is happening much faster than global average” and “is the foreshadowing of what is to come.”  Likewise the NY Times dishonestly claims, “The high temperature is in keeping with the earth’s overall warming trend, which is in large part caused by emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Guardian’s author Graham Readfearn engages in his typical alarmist distortions to write, “Previous research from 2012 found the current rate of warming in the region was almost unprecedented over the past 2000 years.”  Really? Almost unprecedented? The paper he refers to actually stated, “Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia.

The BBC gets the prize for going completely off the rails stating, “Scientists warn that global warming is causing so much melting at the South Pole, it will eventually disintegrate - causing the global sea level to rise by at least three metres (10ft) over centuries.” But there has been no warming trend at the south pole nor in east Antarctica as exemplified by the Dumont D’Urville weather station.

For those readers who only trust peer reviewed papers, I suggest reading, “Foehn Event Triggered by an Atmospheric River Underlies Record-Setting Temperature Along Continental Antarctica” which thoroughly investigated the causes of the previous 2015 record-setting temperature at Esperanza.

What is a foehn event? Foehn events cause rapid extreme temperature jumps simply due to changes in the air pressure as winds descend from a mountain top. During the 2015 foehn event, Esperanza’s daily temperature jumped from 0°C [32°F] 2 days before, to a record setting 17.5°C [63.5°F]. Elsewhere, Antarctic foehn winds are common and have been extensively studied, often raising maximum temperatures by 10+°C [18+°F]  above normal.

As seen in figure “c” below, weather systems in 2015 had driven a warm and humid subtropical air flow from the northwest onto the northern Antarctic Peninsula. That warm air flow raised the western peninsula’s temperatures above normal. Then those winds rose up and over the peninsula’s mountain range amplifying temperatures even further on the east side of the peninsula. As the air rose, its water vapor condensed, both releasing precipitation and releasing latent heat that had further warmed the air.  As that warmer and drier air passed over the mountain crest and descended onto Esperanza, temperatures warmed further as air pressure increased temperatures at a rate of over 5°F for every 1000-foot drop in altitude. A typical foehn event.

 

Warm humid atmospheric river headed to Antarctic Peninsula 2015

As happens in all the earth’s mountainous regions, foehn winds warm the air due to simple physics and well-established gas laws. Warming does not require any added heat from the sun or CO₂. During Esperanza’s 2015 record warmth, temperatures had hovered around 0.5°C [32.9 °F] the day before. But as winds from the northwest increased air flow over the peninsula’s mountains, those foehn winds increased Esperanza’s temperatures by 17.5 °C [31.5 °F]. Those same dynamics were in play during the February 2020 record temperature.

In contrast to several paragraphs trying to implicate global warming, the Guardian did offer one sentence hinting at a foehn wind warming, quoting Dr. Renwick: “higher temperatures in the region tended to coincide with strong northwesterly winds moving down mountain slopes – a feature of the weather patterns around Esperanza in recent days.”

Also a quote from Dr Steve Rintoul, an Antarctic expert at CSIRO, admitted: “This is a record from only a single station, but it is in the context of what’s happening elsewhere and is more evidence that as the planet warms we get more warm records and fewer cold records.” 

But Rintoul is not sharing all the facts. The current context for the Antarctica Peninsula is that for over a decade it has experienced cooling temperatures driven by natural variability. In fact, glaciers in Esperanza’s region have also expanded.  Esperanza’s record temperature simply happened due to foehn winds despite a cooling trend. Unfortunately, the media would rather scare the public to promote a climate crisis, than honestly educate them about the causes of natural climate variability.

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Saving Our Monarch Butterflies, part 1

 

Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle: Egg to Caterpillar to Pupa to Adult

 published in the Pacifica Tribune January 28, 2020

What’s Natural

Saving Our Monarch Butterflies, part 1

With their clownishly colored caterpillars and bold black and orange adults, monarch butterflies get featured in most children’s nature books. Monarch’s ability to migrate thousands of miles, is one of nature’s greatest wonders. But worrisomely, monarch abundance plummeted by 90% over the past 2 decades. Fearing monarchs could be vulnerable to extinction, the US Fish and Wildlife was petitioned in 2014 to list monarchs as “Threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. But due to several contentious issues, more extensive studies were needed. A determination is now expected by the end of 2020. So, what is killing monarchs?

In the 1970s scientists discovered that virtually the entire population of monarchs that breed east of the Rocky Mountains, migrate to extremely small patches of high mountain forests in central Mexico. There they spend the winter from November to March. Since the early 1990s, scientists began estimating monarch abundance by measuring the areas occupied by wintering butterflies. The greatest winter abundance, estimated in 1997, was confined to an area equal to 40 football fields. By 2013, wintering monarchs occupied less than 2 football fields.

In January 2002, a winter storm brought cold rains followed by clear skies. Without the clouds’ greenhouse effect, clear skies allowed temperatures to plummet to 23°F (- 4°C). Still damp, millions of butterflies simply froze in place. Many millions more fell to the ground creating an eerie carpet of dead and dying butterflies several inches deep. Altogether, 500 million butterflies died that winter, killing 80% of the entire eastern population. That the survival of the entire eastern monarch population could hinge on conditions affecting such a small area became a huge concern.

Carpet of Dead Monarchs from Brower (2002)

Such devastating effects from freezing storms emphasized the need to protect the forests where monarchs spend their winters. The intact forest canopy creates a microclimate that had protected monarchs for hundreds of thousands of years. A closed canopy inhibits freezing. But recent logging opened the canopy and enhanced rapid cooling. The Mexican government eventually agreed to ban all logging wherever the butterflies overwinter. Nonetheless, there has always been significant winter storm fatalities. So, a few degrees of global warming would minimize those cold weather massacres.

(In contrast, monarchs breeding west of the Rocky Mountains migrate to forests along the coast of California each winter where freezing is not a concern. The bad news, populations are still collapsing, and monarchs choose to winter in introduced Eucalyptus trees that many people try to eradicate. It remains to be seen how Eucalyptus will be managed.)

Every scientist agrees 2 key factors are reducing monarch abundance. First is degradation of wintering habitat. Second is the loss of milkweed, the caterpillars’ only food plant. The good news is humans are working to restore landscapes to benefit monarchs. However, media outlets hyping a climate crisis, falsely claim climate change is thwarting our attempts to protect the monarchs. But whether global warming is natural or man-made, warmth benefits monarch survival.

Despite horrific winter losses, monarch populations can rapidly rebound. Surviving adults leave their Mexican wintering grounds in March, and soon arrive to breed in Texas and other Gulf Coast regions. They lay eggs, then die. One female can lay up to 1100 eggs. However, for each female, perhaps 40 eggs survive to produce the next generation of females. Depending on temperature, the transformation from egg to adult takes 30 days. Wherever temperatures are favorable, 3 to 4 more generations can be produced throughout the summer. So, a single female arriving in Texas can eventually give rise to 6400 adults by the 3rd generation.

Temperature controls much of monarch growth. Overall, warmer temperatures increase the speed of development, with an optimal temperature approaching 84°F. If temperatures fall below 53°F then eggs, caterpillars and pupa stop growing. If temperatures exceed 91°F, they also stop growing. But research shows if exposed to higher temperatures for just a few hours, there are no detrimental effects.

Monarchs also actively control their body temperature. Caterpillars feed on the top of milkweed leaves during cool weather to enhance warming by the sun, but feed underneath the leaves as temperatures rise. If midday temperatures get too hot, caterpillars seek shelter in shaded leaf litter.

Monarchs linger in their Mexican winter habitat waiting for optimal spring-time temperatures to develop in the USA’s Gulf Coast states. As summer conditions become too warm along the Gulf Coast, monarchs then migrate northward. Favorable warm temperatures, in places like Kansas, allow 4 new generations each year. Further north in cooler Minnesota, only 2 generations are possible. Thus, favorably warmer temperatures allow more generations per year, and more generations allow the monarch’s abundance to multiply and quickly rebound from their winter losses. The 2019 winter count determined wintering monarchs tripled their abundance from their 2013 low point.

Of course, each generation is also dependent on their food plant abundance, which landscape changes and pesticides greatly affect; a topic for part 2.

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net