A recent article in the Washington Post (WaPo) linked recent heavy rain and an associated explosion of mosquitoes to climate change. Other media outlets such as Fox News, cited the WaPo story saying Mosquitoes swarm Texas town, officials blame climate change. Officials may be blaming climate change, but they are wrong. The WaPo and town officials are conflating weather and climate, and one exceptionally wet spring is not indicative of a long-term climate change trend. Further, history shows us that because of its geography, location, and climate, Houston has always been prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Since the end of the last ice age, the south Texas coastal plain, where Houston lies, has always been hot, humid, and rife with mosquitos.
Still, WaPo’s article consists, in part, of an interview with the director of mosquito control for Houston who said:
“[A]s it gets warmer earlier, we see a larger amount of mosquitoes earlier,” said Max Vigilant, director of mosquito and vector control in Harris County, where Houston is located. “We are getting hotter temperatures earlier.”
“This is the impact that climate change has had on Harris Country,” Vigilant added.
If climate change was in fact a driver for increasing mosquitoes, you’d see it in long-term trend data for mosquito populations. However, just one year ago, Houston Public Media ran a story on a data-driven report showing the number of “mosquito days” in Houston has actually decreased since 1979:
The report showed that Houston has seen an average of 20 fewer mosquito days. According to the analysis, in 1979 Houston had 240 mosquito days. In 2022, it saw 182 mosquito days — a decrease of 58 days.
“Mosquito days” are days ideal for the bugs to thrive in: warm, humid weather. According to the study, mosquitos prefer climates that have an average relative humidity of 42% or higher and daily minimum and maximum temperatures between 50–95°F.
The data, graphed below, shows a distinct downward trend since 1979:
This data completely debunks the claim about the “impact that climate change has had” towards increasing the mosquito problem made by the director of mosquito control for Houston.
Interestingly, among the reasons for the declining mosquito days in the Houston area is actually warmer temperatures. Houston Public Media goes on to say in their story, Houston sees fewer days suitable for mosquitos due to increased temperatures, study claims:
Most of the locations that experienced a decrease in mosquito days are in the South, where summer temperatures frequently exceed the upper range that is suitable for mosquito conditions in the analysis.
Houston is built mostly on swampland, according to this Wikipedia entry:
Houston is located in the Gulf Coastal Plain biome, and its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland. Much of the city was built on marshes, forested land, swamp, or prairie, all of which can still be seen in surrounding areas.
The city has constructed reservoirs and channels to remove rainwater from the area into Galveston Bay and has about 2,500 miles of managed waterways. However, some say that Houston is now a “concrete island floating on top of a swamp.”
So, with that much water, it is no wonder that Houston has always been a mosquito breeding ground. The WaPo article even admits this:
Harris County, where it is warm enough to find the insects year-round, is home to more than 50 species of mosquito. “Houston is never completely mosquito-free,” said Sonja Swiger, an entomologist at Texas A&M.
So, why are the number of “mosquito days” decreasing in Houston?
The most likely reason for this is the rapid urbanization of Houston since 1979. According to Rice University in Houston,
The urban footprint of the Houston metropolitan area increased by 63% from 1997 to 2017. In other words, Houston’s impervious surfaces, like pavement and buildings, grew by about 1,000 km2 in 20 years.
An increased urban footprint does two things that affect the mosquito population over time:
- With more impervious surfaces, there’s less swampland and less breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
- The increased urban footprint causes an increase in the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI), and raises temperatures within the city, making it less conducive to mosquitos.
A look at satellite data on UHI from a data-driven study conducted by climatologist Roy Spencer, PhD., shows a very large UHI footprint for Houston as seen in the figure below:
Clearly, the combination of increased infrastructure and increased temperature due to UHI has reduced the number of mosquito days in Houston. The so-called climate change effects cited by WaPo and the director of mosquito control are completely false, as is shown by real world data.
WaPo and Vigilant conflated a short term weather event that created flooding in the Houston area, with long term climate change. Weather is not the same as climate change. The flooding from storms temporarily created more mosquito breeding areas. Because the area’s landscape is relatively flat, many streets are lined with ditches to capture and drain stormwater filled up and did not drain for days. This added plenty of places for ideal mosquito breeding grounds. The same thing happened though not as extreme in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
This is just another instance of activist journalism at work that is tailored to fit a bought and paid for climate crisis narrative that is so often being pushed today in the media. If WaPo’s editors and fact checkers had bothered to do a modicum of research, they would have discovered that there is no merit whatsoever to the claim that climate change is causing an increase in Houston’s mosquito population, rather the problem has declined substantially during recent the period of modest warming.
Every AW column is good enough to be poste here, not just at Climate Realism or Heartland. AH is the only US writer whose columns have been included in my blog’s daily recommended reading list 100% of the time. For years. A perfect “batting average”.
AH & AW are exactly who or what?
AW is Anthony Watts the author of the article
AH is AW spelled wrong at 5:20 am
JWD
With scare stories like these I just laugh. What else is there to do if you are an irredeemable
heretic…
From [US] Media Matters
The 15 most ridiculous things media figures said about climate change in 2020:
CNBC’s Joe Kernan suggests that climate science is discredited, acts more insufferable than an actual fossil fuel executive on his panel
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton: There is no global warming. Greatest scam of all time.
Candace Owens: “Climate doom predictions have always been about scaring citizens into more taxation and regulation.”
Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins falsely states: “The extent of warming caused by rising CO2 is highly uncertain.”
Frequent right-wing media contributor Jason Issac co-authors an op-ed claiming that “‘climate justice’ spending” is “counterproductive” and actually harms communities of color
On Newsmax’s website, Larry Bell praises climate downplayers Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, saying they have exposed the “alarmist climate agenda.”
Rush Limbaugh claims “there is no man-made global warming” and lambasts BBC for rightly calling him part of the climate denial problem.
Marc Morano says that coverage of fires in California is “climate ambulance chasing” and “weaponizing weather events” for a political agenda
Fox News’ Pete Hegseth: “The left has converted to the religion of climate change … [and are] tied to radical environmentalism.”
[And my favourite of the bunch…]
Fox’s Mark Levin claims that “carbon dioxide is not pollution.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/15-most-ridiculous-things-media-figures-said-about-climate-change-2020
Very funny stuff. Some might call it gaslighting.
Did that require a /sarc?
I do hope not. IQs really are dropping if that’s the case.
due of course to carbon pollution! 🙂
carbon pollution dementia.
I don’t know what they do in Houston about mosquitos, but here in Florida the local governments operate vigorous mosquito control programs, including searching for and minimizing ponded water in urbanized areas, and spraying when mosquito populations increase. Code-required stormwater management controls also go a long way towards minimizing ponded water in urbanized areas. Natural wetlands outside of urbanized areas are of course not so treated, for environmental and water quality protection purposes.
The weather is the weather, it can’t be helped, but there is a great deal that governments can do to reduce mosquito populations in areas with relatively dense human populations.
All coastal areas that receive a lot of rainfall have historically always had high populations of mosquitos, leading to rampant disease among human residents, particularly yellow fever and malaria. It is not temperature that drives mosquito populations – it is rainfall and relatively flat terrain that does not drain well that drives mosquito populations. Temperate humid coastal areas have always had major issues with mosquito-borne diseases, while very warm/hot areas with low humidity have not.
“The weather is the weather, it can’t be helped”
Wrong. The gods must be assuaged
The climate cabal is asserting itself as the new gods and pantheon.
If heat is a control for mosquito production, someone had better tell the mossies in Alaska and The Yukon.
Alaska, where the mosquitos are the size of B52s with an attack profile of an A-10 Warthog.
I was told they are the official State Bird in Minnesota…
Do mosquitoes exhale CO2 when they breathe?
“Natural wetlands outside of urbanized areas are of course not so treated, for environmental and water quality protection purposes.”
Maybe some should be?
There is not much reason to try to control mosquitos in areas far removed from significant human population, it’s the humans we are concerned with. Breeding mosquitos (the females who bite to acquire mammal blood) generally don’t travel very far during their lifetime, on the order of 1-3 miles. So having a big mosquito problem in a wilderness preserve like the Florida Everglades has little effect on humans … and park and preserve visitors are encouraged to protect themselves (loose clothing, repellant, etc.) when visiting.
Depends on how you define “outside of urbanized areas”.
I made the mistake of visiting Everglades National Park during the rainy season. Even with repellent, you couldn’t be outside your auto for more than a few minutes before you were swarmed over. I think those salt-water buggers LOVED the smell of DEET.
Wait until some alarmist discovers that palmetto bugs are a type of cockroach. I can see the headline, “Godzilla like cockroach invades U.S due to climate change.”
Tie in “Godzilla” and they can also blame radiation from nuclear power plants as a contributing cause!
” and spraying when mosquito populations increase.”
I have to wonder if they stopped or are reluctant to use pesticides (or some of the more effective ones) because the USEPA or California’s decided in might cause cancer or hurt kids or houseflies or the innocent mosquitoes (male mosquitoes don’t bite) or …
Mosquito control in Florida is done by local government agencies. There is a pretty long list of commercially available insecticides in use that are approved by EPA.
I was thinking of safe and effective pesticides that are no longer approved.
I wish I remembered the name of it but, a pesticide that was very effective for controlling bedbugs was banned by the USEPA.
Bedbugs exploded.
(I think it was reapproved after an outcry from the states that suffered the explosions.)
Ironic that mosquitoes are claimed in the article to be a CC phenomenon, and the normal measures to prevent them, elimination of wetlands, are a causal factor in that other dreaded CC phenomenon….flooding….
I grew up in the south, have family in Houston/Baytown region. I remember Goonybirds flying to spray for mosquitos there and in Louisiana. That was ’60s and ’70s. So no, WaPo, it ain’t climate catastrophe, it is just nature, idiots.
People who know nothing will believe anything. It’s easy to mislead the ignorant, more so, the willingly ignorant.
Welcome to the post-journalism era. Last century, we saw the elevation of journalism to a true profession with dedicated and respected schools of journalism at the University of Missouri and Columbia.
Contemporary journalists are interchangeable with activists. No one can even bother with fact-checking a story with a simple Google search. If it fits the narrative, print it.
History buffs might recall when the battleship USS Maine blew up in a harbor in Havana and the Hearst newspapers contrived to whip up the public into a frenzy that ended with the Spanish-American war. Journalism has fallen that far.
From western Louisiana to west Texas including the coast there are horizontal climate zones, principally based on rainfall, roughly 60 to 15 inches/year. Once you get west of about 96 degrees west longitude, splitting the state with the biggest half west, it gets serious as Corpus Christi is building more industry than necessary water availability. The rule driving east along the coast is wipe off the bugs before they cook. Mosquitoes are claimed to have a small home range, but there are important exceptions. Mosquito Hawks as they call dragonflies have migrations.
Because of the variability like wet tropical storms, serious mosquito problems occur in low rainfall areas due to the topography. Recall a Canadian student bragging about their mosquitoes having trouble with central Texas coast ones. We took many bites to tease him.
It would be very unusual if any climate doom story actually comported to readily available evidence. Storms are increasing? Sorry, but real hurricane data says they are not increasing in strength or number. Tornadoes are likewise unchanged. Sea water rise is to doom all living close to the ocean. Sorry but the few long term tide gauges in the world clearly show that sea level has been rising at a rate of 1-2 mm/yr since before Abe Lincoln was President. And long term studies of peat bogs and river sediments on the US east coast shows there to be no change in this slow rise for the past 6,000 years. Air turbulence is going to get worse because of climate change. Sorry, but just when is this to start? Actual data shows that air turbulence has declined over the past 20-30 years. Drought increasing? Floods increasing? No and no as shown by actual data. Are there any doom predictions backed up by real data? Any? How about just one!
The other thing is that not all mosquitoes are the same with regard to breeding. Aedes eqyptii is the concern in Harris County (because of dengue fever transmission) and this little bugger can reproduce in very small amounts of water – jars and bottles are enough. Other species which need larger bodies of water are controlled quite well now – I think someone commented that ponds etc. are well managed in Florida and my understanding is that Harris County does this as well.
Don’t worry, soon it will be 100 for a couple of weeks with no rain and they will die. Texas has some mean bush.
Houston is an hour away from Houston…… it is funny because it is true.
being from the general area not uncommon to have years with bad mosquito problems. Control helps, but if unfamiliar with the area folks tend to overlook the affects of the winds. This year, following one of the driest years on record for the area, now being a rather wet one, add in some strong south winds(wind has been blowing in smoke from Mexico across Texas gulf coast for the last couple weeks also) and you have the perfect recipe for a lot of mosquitos. They can and do travel many miles with the winds in a very short amount of time. I do not doubt there are places and kinds of mosquitos that stay in one area , but this is not true for the Texas gulf coast. On windy days can easily find the large yellow legs 10-15+ miles from the nearest salt marsh plus all there relatives.
Climate change in Houston. Well, let me think …
Houston has hot humid summers, really nice but colorless falls, sunny winters, and early exuberant springs. Houston has drought years and flood years. Houston has hurricanes every so often, and even a tornado or two.
That hasn’t changed in the 40 years I’ve been here.
The only thing that’s changed is with all that extra carbon dioxide, the illegal aliens are mowing my lawn every two weeks now instead of three.
In the UK ague, as it was named, was endemic in the Fens, the marshes of the Thames Estuary, low lying areas of Somerset and the Ribble area of Lancashire. The Lambeth and Westminster marshes in London were notorious. In the 18th and 19th centuries the disease spread to Scotland eventually reaching as far north as Inverness.
But by the beginning of the 20thC the disease disappeared from the UK as the marshes were drained and built over or utilised for agriculture.
Speaking of the Fens, anybody know what happened to Peta of Newark? Long time no posts.
When the coast of Texas is lifted to an elevation of 4,000 feet the climate of Houston will be different from its current coastal plain biome, read warm water swamp.
Until then, suck it up buttercup.
We have finally identified the positive feedback mechanism:
CO2 causes warming (aka climate change).
Climate change causes increases in mosquito populations.
Mosquitoes exhale CO2
Increasing populations drives the CO2 levels up.
Rinse, spin, repeat.
So even if there is an increase in mosquitos, there are plenty of larvicides available to combat biting insects. Winnipeg, Canada, also has long had mosquito problems that vary annually according to rainfall, not because of climate change; but the municipal government has developed aggressive programs to control them and there’s no evidence that these chemicals and techniques can’t be adopted elsewhere.
I had some unusual indigestion issues earlier this week. The only possible explanation is climate change.