More modeling madness projecting the future, but the actual data for the past 30 years says otherwise, with a positive trend. Regular commenter Julienne Stroeve of NSIDC is one of the co-authors, so perhaps she’ll weigh in here. The article says “They selected the five models that most closely reproduced changes in actual Antarctic sea ice cover during the 20th century.” But given what we’ve seen recently about preselection of data in Gergis et al, I wonder if this isn’t another case of the “screening fallacy“.
From NCAR: Emperor penguins threatened by Antarctic sea ice loss
BOULDER—A decline in the population of emperor penguins appears likely this century as climate change reduces the extent of Antarctic sea ice, according to a detailed projection published this week.
The study, led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), with co-authors from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other organizations, focuses on a much-observed colony of emperor penguins in Terre Adélie, Antarctica. The authors conclude that the number of breeding pairs may fall by about 80 percent by 2100.
“The projected decreases in sea ice may fundamentally alter the Antarctic environment in ways that threaten this population of penguins,” says NCAR scientist Marika Holland, a co-author of the study.
The study uses a set of sophistical computer simulations of climate as well as a statistical model of penguin demographics. Building on previous work, it examines how the sea ice may vary at key times during the year such as during egg laying, incubation, rearing chicks, and non- breeding season, as well as the potential influence of sea ice concentrations on males and females.
The authors stress that their projections contain large uncertainties, because of the difficulties in projecting both climate change and the response of penguins. However, almost all of their computer simulations pointed to a significant decline in the colony at Terre Adélie, a coastal region of Antarctica where French scientists have conducted penguin observations for more than 50 years.
“Our best projections show roughly 500 to 600 breeding pairs remaining by the year 2100,” says lead author Stéphanie Jenouvrier, a WHOI biologist. “Today, the population size is around 3,000 breeding pairs.”
She noted that another penguin population, the Dion Islets penguin colony close to the West Antarctic Peninsula, has disappeared, possibly because of a decline in Antarctic sea ice.
The new research represents a major collaboration between biologists and climate scientists to assess the potential impacts of climate change on a much-studied species.
Published this week in the journal Global Change Biology, the study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor. Other funders include WHOI; the French National Agency for Research (ANR) program on biodiversity; the ANR REMIGE program (Behavioral and Demographic Responses of Indian Ocean Marine Top Predators to Global Environmental Changes); the Zone Research Workshop for the Antarctic and Subantarctic Environment (ZATA); the Paul Emilie Victor Institute (IPEV); Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; Marie-Curie European Fellowship; and the U.S. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences visiting fellowship.
Vulnerable emperors of the ice
At nearly four feet tall, emperors are the largest species of penguin. They are vulnerable to changes in sea ice, where they breed and raise their young almost exclusively. If that ice breaks up and disappears early in the breeding season, massive breeding failure may occur, Jenouvrier says.
Disappearing sea ice may also affect the penguins’ food sources. They feed primarily on fish, squid, and krill, a shrimplike animal that feeds on zooplankton and phytoplankton that grow on the underside of ice. If the ice goes, Jenouvrier says, so too will the plankton, causing a ripple effect through the food web that may starve the various species that penguins rely on as prey.
To project how the extent of sea ice in the region will change this century, Holland and another co-author, Julienne Stroeve, a sea ice specialist from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, evaluated 20 of the world’s leading computer-based climate models. They selected the five models that most closely reproduced changes in actual Antarctic sea ice cover during the 20th century.
“When a computer simulation performs well in reproducing past climate conditions, that suggests its projections of future climate conditions are more reliable,” Holland says.
The team evaluated simulations from each of the 20 climate models. The simulations were based on a scenario of moderate growth in greenhouse gas emissions during this century. The moderate growth scenario portrays future reliance by society on a combination of greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels as well as renewable energy sources.
The simulations showed a decline in sea ice coverage across a large region by Terre Adélie at key times in the penguin breeding cycle, although they differed in the details.
Jenouvrier used the output from the climate models to determine how changes in temperature and sea ice might affect the emperor penguin population at Terre Adélie, studying such details as how the sea ice was likely to vary during breeding season and how it could affect chicks, breeding pairs, and non-breeding adults. She found that if global temperatures continue to rise at their current rate—causing sea ice in the region to shrink—penguin population numbers most likely will diminish slowly until about 2040, after which they would decline at a much steeper rate as sea ice coverage drops below a usable threshold.
The authors say that more research is needed to determine whether emperor penguins may be able to adapt to changing conditions or disperse to regions where the sea ice is more habitable.
Human reliance on the Antarctic
Rising temperature in the Antarctic isn’t just a penguin problem, according to Hal Caswell, a senior mathematical biologist at WHOI and collaborator on the study. As sea ice coverage continues to shrink, the resulting changes in the Antarctic marine environment will affect other species, and may affect humans as well.
“We rely on the functioning of those ecosystems,” he says. “We eat fish that come from the Antarctic. We rely on nutrient cycles that involve species in the oceans all over the world. Understanding the effects of climate change on predators at the top of marine food chains—like emperor penguins—is in our best interest, because it helps us understand ecosystems that provide important services to us.”
Also co-authoring the study were Christophe Barbraud and Henri Weimerskirch of the Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, in France, and Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the United States.
About the article
Title: Effects of climate change on an emperor penguin population: analysis of coupled demographic and climate models
Authors: Stéphanie Jenouvrier, Marika Holland, Julienne Stroeve, Christophe Barbraud, Henri Weimerskirch, Mark Serreze, and Hal Caswell
Journal: Global Change Biology
Update
The article appears to be available here.
h/t to commenter Michael R
‘The authors say that more research is needed ‘ now there is s real surprise.
Models and BS all the way down ,mix in with the usual claims of doom and demand for cash , the classic climate science recipe
“She (Jenouvrier) found that if global temperatures continue to rise at their current rate—causing sea ice in the region to shrink—penguin population numbers most likely will diminish slowly until about 2040, after which they would decline at a much steeper rate as sea ice coverage drops below a usable threshold.
Well, for one thing, the temperature’s “Current rate” is actually in decline for the past 16 years, so the study is essentially useless as the “if” condition just isn’t being met.
End of story!
Now the “disconnect” between CO2 and temperatures becoming quite well known by now (see:
http://www.colderside.com/Colderside/Temp_%26_CO2.html
The Sea Ice since 2004 seems to have a 3+year up and down periodicity, where large (2 meter+) Antarctic land snow buildup occurring in years of diminished sea ice and little land snow accumulation in times where sea-ice increases in area. So things continue to change, and I think we knew that already. johnwschwartz (above at 6/21 – 11:25) had it right, with so many equivocations (at least accurately) described, we have something less than definitive and more pandering to the current AGW craze.
Penguinville!
Well, if the good author frequently visits and posts, surely she knows how much the WUWT auduence love complete papers, all calculations defined, all data used, all model output and how the data was interpreted.
I especially would like to see the specifics on how penguin mortality was tied to ice percentages, or was penguin mortality tied to some other effect and attributed to ice?
If pigs grow wings, they may attempt to fly and most likely they will succeed but further research is needed. Please send money.
“Given the fact that we have little idea how much ice there was prior to the satellite era, how precisely did they determine which models best fit the data?”
Do we have records from whaling nations? I assume that whalers track close to the ice.
Tad, you forgot your /Sarc tag….
Hmmm, since the sea ice is increasing wouldn’t there be increased stress on the birds to reach their breeding grounds? Oh, that’s right. The models say the ice will disappear if we just wait long enough. Reality be damned. Of course the scientists messing with the birds wouldn’t have an affect on them either. /sarc
At the very least, it seems that “they” are getting smart enough to push their projections out past 50 yrs. So they cannot be personally humiliated when their projections turn out to be absolute horse-poop.
TR
re Jim Steele’s most excellent post above above – amplifying information.
This is a 2001 National Geographic article about the Emperor Penguin decline. No gross numbers are given to compare to the 600,000 bird count. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/0509_penguindecline.html
This is a summary of the 2009 article by the same team: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127090728.htm. Again, no counts are given.
This is an article about the disappearing Dion Inlet colony: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014738. This is a very readable article – recommended. Nice section on alternative causes. I was hoping for a discussion on whether Emperors would emigrate to a new breeding location but did not find it.
This is a blog post summarizing how banding effects survival rates. http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/doh-declining-penguin-population-study-blames-research-scientists/
And here is the more focused article in Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110112/full/news.2011.15.html
Thanks for an informative post Jim!!!!
P. Solar says:
June 20, 2012 at 11:12 am
As we continue to ignore the data and write papers based on defective models… “the resulting changes in the Antarctic marine environment will affect other species, and may affect humans as well.”
Translation: “Unless we categorize any changes in the Antarctic marine environment that our models project as catastrophic for the critters, our funding will dry up”
The authors stress that their projections contain large uncertainties
========================
Yeah, like as far as they know it could go in the opposite direction
…and not even embarrassed to put their names on this
Emperor Penguins are pretty tough little blighters (Australian Antarctic Magazine Issue 15: 2008):
“Upon departing the colony the (Emperor) fledglings had to cross nearly 50 km of fast-ice and could not feed for several days until they reached open water.
“Once they reached the edge of the fast-ice the young emperor penguins had 200-300 km of pack-ice in front of them. It was remarkable to see how they moved through it, heading directly north for the deep oceanic waters of the Southern Ocean.
“The fledglings dispersed over nearly a quarter of the Southern Ocean in their first six months at sea. The eastern-most position was at 93°E and the most westerly position reached was at 7°E – over 2300 km from their birth colony! The total distance traveled by one individual was nearly 7000 km.
“But the story doesn’t end here. Emperor penguins are three years of age, or older, when they first return to their colony to breed.”
But the main threat seems to come from…er…. scientists:
“A highly contagious poultry virus has infected penguins in Antarctica. It is the first known transmission of a “foreign” disease to wildlife on the icy continent. Although none of the birds appears to be sick, researchers say the outbreak, reported in today’s issue of Nature highlights the risk of tourists and researchers spreading disease.”
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/21620/ml_39790372337963_issue201520final.pdf
“Warming trends a serious threat to polar bear survival
Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher show that climate warming is a direct threat to the long-term survival of polar bears. The loss of sea ice, the primary habitat of polar bears, threatens populations by reducing the bears’ ability to hunt. With increasingly poor access to prey such as seals, polar bears experience longer fasting periods, fewer and smaller cubs, lower survival rates of cubs and older bears, and an overall reduction in health. Warming effects are predicted to impact the more southerly populations first with a large disappearance of polar bears by the mid-century.
Accepted Article.”
Irony, O biting irony! Desrocher, this name rings a bell… LOL
Penguins? They mourn for the potential loss of Penguins?
Then why in the @ur momisugly#$ do they keep launching ballistic missiles at them?
2009 – $273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory
http://spaceflightnow.com/taurus/oco/failure.html
2011 – $424 million The Glory satellite
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-20039222-239.html
I am in the midst of writing a book on all he species that were supposedly endangered by CO2 and the was just finishing my chapter “he Emperor Penguin has no Clothes” so I am very familiar with all the papers and data. I wanted to save it for the book but I would rather share some relevant points about this paper with the blogosphere.
One myth perpetuated by the 2001 paper by Barbraud was that disintegrating ice was causing chick mortalities. David Ainely who I respect very much, unfortunately latched on to that idea. After several email discussions where I argued that there was no such evidence, I emailed Barbraud asking for dates of any such events.He admitted he had none, and such dates are “very hard to come by”.
Also in the Barbraud’s2001 paper they used sea ice extent that is not connected at all to Emperor survival.It is fast ice and open water access, and because sea ice extent was not biologically defensibly, they switched their statistical analysis to sea ice concentration.
In Barbraud’s 2001 paper the methods section reported that they applied flipper bands from 1968 to 1980. However the drop in survival coincided better with the banding activities than it did with sea ice extent and there are several papers documenting the ill effects of flipper bands. Also whether or not flipper bands caused death, they would certainly stress Emperors that already feel like fish out of water so the penguins might have just abandoned the colony.Their models can not tell death from emigration and there were never any bodies. The same 2009 Fretwell paper that used satellite data to document new colonies and doubled the number of known penguins, discovered a new colony near the Mertz Glacier right near the Dumont D’Urville colony that is the being studied and modeled. It is very likely that many of the new Mertz Glacier Penguins were refugees from the disruption from banding. Not to mention the dynamiting of 3 islands to build an airstrip in close proximity to the colony in 1984.
I was just writing today that “Perhaps due to the severe criticisms from several corners that linked low Emperor survival to their use of flipper banding, these authors issued a new 2012 paper that now reports that they actually banded from “1968 to 1988”. Perhaps it is just the skeptic in me, but it would be very tempting to change the dates due to the fact that penguin survivorship rapidly recovered from 1980 to 1988. By simply changing the dates, voila!, there is no more statistical link to death by flipper bands. Perhaps that is not the reason, but it is suspiciously curious that they overlooked 8 years of flipper banding in their 2001 paper when they had modeled the population from 1952 to 2000 based on flipper band returns.
Furthermore by 2000 the colony also appeared to be growing once again. I had hoped this new 2012 paper they would update the population numbers, but they limited their study to years before 2000. Although they have counted pairs of breeding adults from 1962 until the present, they suspiciously chose only to model population estimates using data prior to 2000. The reported reason for not using data after 2000 was that their were too few banded birds, even though an exact count of pairs would be much more reliable method of measuring abundance. They would justify this omission because only mark and recapture studies provide survivorship estimates, but again only if they can prove the penguins died and did not emigrate. But with the annoying confounding factor of flipper bands hidden, and a new sets of carefully selected statistics, they went on to model that rising CO2 would reduce the population by 81% by the year 2100.”
This is the kind of shit that makes me completely distrust any climate scientist!
Hmm, 19th Century whaling lead to a massive decrease in whale numbers (that feed on Krill) so over the 20th Century. there would have been a population increase in other animals based on the same food chain. So the Penguins are likely to be at a much higher numbers than in the past. With the slow increase in whale numbers, I would expect a slow decline in Penguins,,,,,
Solution? Nuke the Whales. (Particularly any homeless, gender confused ones who read the Guardian…)
….. but globally and locally in the Antarctic sea ice coverage is not shrinking. What is the point of this exercise?
I once asked a Mathematics undergrad student what was the point of studying “mathematical topologies ?” He responded that Baise Pascal had invented differential equations just to “make a form of mathematics that was completely useless.” Eventually, differential equations came to be the basis of most modern engineering, so they hoped that eventually somebody would find a use for “mathematical topologies” and they would be ready.
If the Antarctic sea ice coverage ever starts shrinking, they will be ready to predict doom for the emperor penguins.
Living in Australia, I frequently check Antarctic Weather conditions.
I would stronly advise anyone who might be in the least bit ‘worried’ or ‘anxious’ about Global Warming to glance at Antarctic Weather conditions once in a while. Summer or Winter!
“They selected the five models that most closely reproduced changes in actual Antarctic sea ice cover during the 20th century.”
Too much selection of data and models. Recently, McIntyre blogged about the longest, most detailed proxy for temp over several thousand years that never gets used: the Law Dome ice core. It was deliberately rejected by Gergis, et all in their recent study (whose publication was cancelled when McIntyre pointed out unrelated terminal statistics gaffes in it) and by every other charter of the millennial temperature record because it doesn’t support their biases. The Emporer Penguin is doing fine. Remember recently these experts reported a drastic drop in the population of these birds until a NASA satellite showed they were all fine, just somewhere else.
There ought to be a phrase in science for its own version of an urban myth – the constantly repeated projection that is contrary to and commonly treated as fact.
Ross says:
June 20, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Good point! Was there any talk of predation in the paper? If not, how can we be sure that the recently increasing ice hasn’t decreased predation resulting in many more emperors than previously thought?
I have a suspicion this paper is in the ‘Gergis’ class.
I think all pengiuns and polar bears should carry ID. Maybe we could use their divers[sic] licence.
🙂
Yawn, another study based on unfounded data (AKA computer models) and the real world data says the opposite. Why do they say it? Well they can play the “cute animal will be hurt” card and get sympathy from the world’s idiots. Too bad there are so many of those.
Did these people realize that these animals **** every 10 minutes and that any area around them smells terrible? Yea, spend some time around penguins and learn something about them before turning them into your poster…because I will share truths like that. Not so cute now, are they?