Susan Crockford
While sea ice in the Arctic has decreased significantly since 1979, the ice in Antarctica is surprisingly stable. Experts acknowledge that current climate models – which assume that CO2 emissions lead to global sea ice loss – have predicted Antarctic sea ice will decrease over the past few decades – and will fall even further. more in the future. They did finally admit they were wrong.
John Turner (British Antarctic Survey) and Josifino Comiso (NASA) in a 2017 NATURE article:
“Current climate models have difficulty simulating the seasonal and regional variations seen in Antarctic sea ice.“
A new model released earlier this year shows that the near-stable ice cover in Antarctica that has existed for the past four decades can now be expected to continue for nearly three more decades. until at least 2050 and only gradually thereafter (Rackow et al. 2022).
However, emperor penguin researchers used old error models to derive species listed as ‘threatened’ in the US just a few months ago due to predicted sea ice loss (Jenouvrier et al. 2009; Jenouvrier et al. 2020; Trathan et al. 2020; USFWS 2022).
In other words, it’s not just the penguinologists who choose the most pessimistic and the ‘worst case’ scenario is completely unreasonable to make their case, as polar bear experts love to do (Crockford 2019; Hausfather and Peters 2020): sea ice experts now say those old sea ice patterns are pretty much useless for prediction future sea ice conditions and have known this for more than five decades (Blanchard-Wrigglesworth et al 2021, 2022; Comiso et al 2017; Turner and Comiso 2017; Turner and Overland 2009; Turner et al 2013) .
Sea ice experts knew that the models were wrong for Antarctic sea ice and CO2–and have written about their concerns in the scientific literature–but the penguin biologists ignored it with evidence and go on to assert that penguins are doomed to near extinction due to future loss of sea ice in the Southern Ocean. See the figure below, from Jenouvrier et al. 2020:
ESA protection for cichlids was granted by US Fish & Wildlife on October 25, 2022, although a new model of Antarctic sea ice was published more than eight months earlier, on February 2, 2022. This means both petitioner for ESA listing and USFWS ignored years of evidence provided by credible experts that Antarctic sea ice patterns were not fit for purpose plus a more sensible choice was made, then called it all “the best science out there”.
The new model can also be bad, but that doesn’t mean it ignores solid evidence that the old model has serious flaws.
The chart below is from Turner and Paper Comiso and shows the difference of concerns: summer arctic ice compare to Antarctic winter ice (September for both) from 1979-2017, with maximum for Antarctic ice reached 20.11mkm2 in 2014 (when Arctic ice was 6th lowest at 5.02mkm2):
That chart ends in 2017, now it’s 5 years ago. Here are the degrees at September 19, 2022near the maximum for that year, finally reached 18.19 mkm2. Plenty of ice for emperor penguins, which specifically lay eggs and raise their young during winter/spring, mainly on fast land-based ice:
Besides, I couldn’t help but notice that emperor penguin researchers working in Antarctica focus on winter sea ice in relation to future health and life while bear experts Arctic and other arctic biologists are most concerned with summer sea ice loss. In both cases, species of concern that depend on ice need sea ice in winter/spring to breed and/or feed. The difference is that Antarctic summer sea ice almost always disappears during summer (down to 15% or less of winter levels) and no one pretends that any Antarctic animals require Summer sea ice for survival. Strange, that.
Presenter
BirdLife International. 2020. Aptenodytes forsteri. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T22697752A132600320. Download on October 26, 2022. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22697752/157658053
Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, E., I. Eisenman, S. Zhang, et al. 2022. New perspectives on the mystery of Antarctic sea ice expansion, Eos 103. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EO220076.
Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, E., Roach, LA, Donohoe, A. and Ding, Q. 2021. The effects of winds and Southern Ocean SST on Antarctic sea ice trends and variability. Climate Magazine 34(3):949–965. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0386.1.
Hausfather, Z. and Peters, GP 2020. Emissions – misleading ‘business as usual’ story [“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 models and climate projections by IPCC predict decline in emperor penguin populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106:1844-1847. Available here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23951047_Demographic_models_and_IPCC_climate_projections_predict_the_decline_of_an_Emperor_penguin_population
Jenouvrier, S. et al. 2020. The goals of the Paris Agreement will likely prevent the future decline of emperor penguins. Global change biology 26(3): 1170-1184. [paywalled] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14864
Rackow, T., Danilov, S., Goessling, HF et al. 2022. Antarctic sea ice depletion is delayed in high resolution climate change simulations. natural communication 13:637. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28259-y
Trathan, PN et al. 2020. Emperor Penguins – Vulnerable to the expected rate of warming and loss of sea ice. biological conservation 241:108216. [open access] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108216
Turner, J. and Comiso, J. 2017. Solve the Antarctic sea ice puzzle. Nature 547:275-277. https://www.nature.com/articles/547275a
Turner, J. and Overland, J. 2009. Contrast climate change in the two polar regions. Polar research 28(2):146-164. https://doi.org/10.3402/polar.v28i2.6120
Turner, J., Bracegirdle, TJ, Phillips, T. et al. two thousand and thirteen. Initial assessment of Antarctic sea ice extent in CMIP5 models. Climate Magazine 26(5):1473-1484.
USFWS 2022. ‘Endangered and threatened wildlife and plants; Threatened species status for emperor penguins with Section 4(d) rule.’ Federal Registration 87(206):64700-64720.
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