A Hot Day’s Night: The Beetles
A Hot Day’s Night: The Beetles -
The semester is almost over here in Michigan, and I am looking forward to more regularity in writing these blogs. Sorry for the recent infrequency, and the occasional excursions into the arcane. I am looking for well posed, interesting, new questions to focus on, and you know how to find me if you have a good idea. In this entry I want to build of the recent heat and the early spring.
The thread I made through the last blog ended up with Plant Hardiness Zones, which are those maps that gardeners and farmers use to decide when to plant seeds. Over the last 20 – 30 years the warming of the planet has caused the northern migration of these zones. The Washington Post has an excellent graphic that shows the changes between 1990 and 2012. Since I am not so facile, I have taken from this graphic the two extremes, 1990 and 2012.
Figure 1: 1990 U.S. Plant Hardiness Zones. (From Washington Post)
Figure 2: 2012 U.S. Plant Hardiness Zones. (From Washington Post)
What I want to look at here are the very coldest temperatures, the purples. If you look at Zone 2b, the zone below -40 degrees F, it essentially disappears between 1990 and 2012. Zone 3a, which is between -35 degrees F and – 40 degrees F becomes much smaller.
So this past winter, and especially March 2012, was extraordinarily warm in the 48 contiguous states. In fact, I, who fly too much, had one of the easiest winters of travel. Based on Jeff Master’s blogs, I chose several times to go through Chicago, and for the most part I have landed with splendid views of a blue Lake Michigan. There was an interesting piece on Talk of the Nation, noting the relation between a warm winter and the lack of flu. So what is the problem? It’s not below -40 degrees anymore. Air travel is easier. We might have less flu. Does anyone besides me, planting potatoes on a dry 80 degree day in March, worry about this?
I have been spending a lot of time with beetle-killed wood this year. You might recall a couple of blogs back in 2009 where I talked about the pine beetles which are killing millions of acres of pine trees in the western U.S. and Canada. (Climate Change and the Forest, Climate and the Beetle) It is beautiful wood, often with a light blue tint. I am using it to restore a couple of 100 year old out buildings. There is a LOT of it; in fact, more than one can imagine managing. There is some lumber being made, some fire wood being made, but for the most part there are millions of acres of dead trees. I have talked to a couple of people who wonder why there is not more outrage about these massive forest kills. That’s fodder for the comments.
Back up to the maps. The pine beetle responsible for killing the pines in the Rockies is itself killed, controlled, by temperatures less the -40 degrees F. This is at the edge of the coldest temperatures normally seen in the U.S., and these cold extremes have largely disappeared since 1990. In the map below, I have used the interactive version of the map from the US Department of Agriculture to extract the State of Colorado. There are only very small areas of Zone 3a remaining.
Figure 3: Plant hardiness zones in Colorado for 2012. From US Department of Agriculture.
We adapt to climate change – or we will. Now, one of the most effective adapters seems to be the Mountain Pine Beetle. In The American Naturalist there is a pre-publication posting of an article on the Unprecedented Summer Generation of the Mountain Pine Beetle. That is, rather than there being one generation of Mountain Pine Beetle during the year, in Colorado, in recent years there have been two broods. The paper is by Mitton and Ferrenberg. There is a press release of the paper here.
They noted in 2008 pine beetles flying and attacking pines more than a month earlier than the historic norm. They set up experiments to test three hypotheses: 1) That temperature had not changed; 2) That the length and timing of the flight season had not changed; and 3) the life cycle of the beetle had not changed. Their results found that there had been significant warming, with spring coming earlier. They found that the behavior of the pine beetle was explained by earlier emergence of the beetles, followed by a second brood of the beetles in the summer. Figure 4 shows this schematically. It is striking to see the move to earlier springs in the figure – as with the hardiness zones.
Figure 4: The historical mountain pine beetle (MPB) univoltine life cycle (above calendar arrows and linked by black arrows) and the observed MPB bivoltine life cycle (below calendar arrows and linked by red arrows). Univoltine means one brood per year, and bivoltine means two broods per year. Calendar arrow colors represent monthly temperature regimes: blue for <0°C, yellow for 0°–4.99°C, orange for 5°–9.99°C, and red for 10°C and higher. From Mitton and Ferrenberg, Mountain Pine Beetle Develops an Unprecedented Summer Generation in Response to Climate Warming.
This research took place in an area that in the 1970s was judged to be “climatically unsuitable for Mountain Pine Beetle development … .” The study is convincing that the devastation of the forest due to the pine beetle is directly related to the warming planet. It points out the vulnerability of the tree populations, as the trees that are being impacted now have not developed a historical resistance to the pine beetle. Since most of the beetles that are born live, this impact is not incremental, as that second generation is enormous.
So, yes, this warm winter has had its advantages - less fuel oil was needed. But in the western forest we are seeing this case study of wide ranging ecological disruption. The consequences of the disruption will unfold in the next decades. Questions of fire and soil erosion will emerge. The impact on tourism will be realized - and, of course, water quality and the change in the ecosystems of the western forests. The Mountain Pine Beetle is adapting rapidly to global warming, what are our strategies to adapt to the Pine Beetle?
r
Reader Comments
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Yes, adaptation seems to be what is left for us.
"I have talked to a couple of people who wonder why there is not more outrage and these massive forest kills."
Yes, fodder for comments. Gee, I wonder why no one has tried to get the message out before now? I mean, who could have seen this was coming? ... Why is it that people are upset about their house burning down when they were warned not to store gasoline next to their wood burning stove? Hindsight is 20/20, but after thought does little good. .... sigh
Um, Dip them in chocolate and eat them?
I have heard and read of pine beetle troubles in WA State since the 1990s. Temps do not reach -40F there, even in eastern WA where the pine forests are. Found some info on the bug itself and some beetle management suggestions from Washington State University.
(Hi, Rookie. How's your gecko?)
Hi, Barefoot!
I have not seen that gecko since the end of last summer. He still has friends and relatives hanging around and they are doing fine. Is everything going well on your end?
A few references on Climate Change and the Woolly Agelid:
Link
Link
Here's one on the impact being seen in Michigan:
Link
And Tennessee:
Link
Here's something about the fight against it in Pennsylvania:
Link
Here are some quotes from the USDA.
"Many people have seized on the shift of zones in the new map as obvious evidence of climate change. But USDA spokeswoman Kim Kaplan said the map "is simply not a good instrument" for making that assumption because it's not an apples-to-apples comparison with the old map. In any case, the plant hardiness map is not about climate, the large, long-term trends that show up only when data from many years are analyzed to shake out the noise of short-term weather variations. Plants, like people, live in short-term, variable weather; this map is an estimating tool based on average weather."
The long-awaited new version is "the most sophisticated Plant Hardiness Zone Map yet for the United States," said Catherine Woteki, USDA undersecretary for research, education and economics, in a press release. It is based on 30 years of weather measurements instead of 13, collected from almost 8,000 weather stations, and incorporates technical advances in computers, software and global positioning systems.
Other conditions beyond minimum winter temperatures are now factored in, such as elevation, the closeness of large bodies of water and the urban heat island effect.
Not every place moved to a warmer zone; a few areas in the West moved a notch colder, reflecting harsher conditions at higher elevations.
Link
There doesn't seem to have been any large public outcry when the American Chestnut blight killed billions of American Chestnuts. These trees were the dominant tree in the forests of most states in the Eastern US. Their demise has ripples through the ecosystem that last to today.
Perhaps one reason there was little to no outcry is that there are so many species of trees in the East. Over one hundred species of trees reside in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park alone. The chestnuts were replaced by other species fairly quickly. Another reason, at least in this area (I'm less than an hour from the GSMNP), is that there was extensive clear cut logging, so people were used to seeing the area with very few trees.
I do wonder why there isn't more outcry in the West, though, where there are relatively few species of trees? As a generalization, I'd guess that it's because we Americans are so removed from nature. Most Americans might notice that the trees are dying or dead, but that's as far as it goes for them. They've got to feed the family, fill the gas tank, etc.
I do love a good comedy! Unfortunately, that wasn't even good comedy --just the usual slapstick foibles of those who deny reality and science. (Interesting how that little sunspot/SST graph got cut off at 1980, isn't it?)
You guys! LOL
9:14 PM GMT on April 11, 2012
Curiously many of the facts of the disclaimer ... 30 years of data, average weather, consideration of heat islands, altitude, closeness to water are the exact considerations that are taken into account in the development of climate information from weather data. Since you are data interested, might be worth examining how this compares with Maurer et al. observational gridded data and the USHCN v2 data ...
r
9:22 PM GMT on April 11, 2012
I hadn't thought of that but there's probably a fair amount of truth to it. There's probably a reason the denial industry works so hard to convince people that it's not we humans who are to blame.
can regulate this
by regulating SSTs?
.
New comparison of ocean temperatures reveals rise over the last century
Ocean robots used in Scripps-led study that traces ocean warming to late 19th century
A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years.
The research led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego physical oceanographer Dean Roemmich shows a .33-degree Celsius (.59-degree Fahrenheit) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 meters (2,300 feet) depth. The increase was largest at the ocean surface, .59-degree Celsius (1.1-degree Fahrenheit), decreasing to .12-degree Celsius (.22-degree Fahrenheit) at 900 meters (2,950 feet) depth.
The report is the first global comparison of temperature between the historic voyage of HMS Challenger (1872-1876) and modern data obtained by ocean-probing robots now continuously reporting temperatures via the global Argo program. Scientists have previously determined that nearly 90 percent of the excess heat added to Earth's climate system since the 1960s has been stored in the oceans. The new study, published in the April 1 advance online edition of Nature Climate Change and coauthored by John Gould of the United Kingdom-based National Oceanography Centre and John Gilson of Scripps Oceanography, pushes the ocean warming trend back much earlier.
"The significance of the study is not only that we see a temperature difference that indicates warming on a global scale, but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years," said Roemmich, co-chairman of the International Argo Steering Team. "This implies that the time scale for the warming of the ocean is not just the last 50 years but at least the last 100 years."
Although the Challenger data set covers only some 300 temperature soundings (measurements from the sea surface down to the deep ocean) around the world, the information sets a baseline for temperature change in the world's oceans, which are now sampled continuously through Argo's unprecedented global coverage. Nearly 3,500 free-drifting profiling Argo floats each collect a temperature profile every 10 days.
Roemmich believes the new findings, a piece of a larger puzzle of understanding the earth's climate, help scientists to understand the longer record of sea-level rise, because the expansion of seawater due to warming is a significant contributor to rising sea level. Moreover, the 100-year timescale of ocean warming implies that the Earth's climate system as a whole has been gaining heat for at least that long.
###
Launched in 2000, the Argo program collects more than 100,000 temperature-salinity profiles per year across the world's oceans. To date, more than 1,000 research papers have been published using Argo's data set.
The Nature Climate Change study was supported by U.S. Argo through NOAA.
That is some impeccable logic... ;-)
He speaks as though maybe is 100%................
Keep in mind that we need to double food production in 20 years or less and the land that is left is not the good stuff we started on first.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_foley_the_other _inconvenient_truth.html
I do want to thank my friends and fellow citizens that both serve in our military and fight at home to save our forests from wildfire and beetles. If returning heroes can't find jobs, the fire lines will be in dire need while this drought continues and as summer comes on.
We need to learn from your resilience.
I'm serious but attacks on climate science by former NASA staff shouldn't be taken seriously
"NASA sponsors research into many areas of cutting-edge scientific inquiry, including the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate. As an agency, NASA does not draw conclusions and issue 'claims' about research findings. We support open scientific inquiry and discussion.
"Our Earth science programs provide many unique space-based observations and research capabilities to the scientific community to inform investigations into climate change, and many NASA scientists are actively involved in these investigations, bringing their expertise to bear on the interpretation of this information. We encourage our scientists to subject these results and interpretations to scrutiny by the scientific community through the peer-review process. After these studies have met the appropriate standards of scientific peer-review, we strongly encourage scientists to communicate these results to the public.
"If the authors of this letter disagree with specific scientific conclusions made public by NASA scientists, we encourage them to join the debate in the scientific literature or public forums rather than restrict any discourse."
I take the former NASA folks shot across the bow about as seriously as I take Gavin Schmidt, Kevin Trenberth and that crack pot James Hanson.
FWIW it is people like me (hunters and sportsmen) who do more for wildlife than any wacko environmentalist from DeSmog, through not only licenses but through orgs. such as Ducks Unlimited, Ruffed Grouse Society, Pheasants Forever, Muskie Inc, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Minnesota Deer Hunters Association just to name the ones I belong to.
The right question to ask is when did it start and what caused the start of the warming.
Maybe you believe it was all the excess CO2 in the atmosphere in 1870 or before. You may be right but I doubt it.
BTW I have seen you make the claim that the arctic will be ice free in 2016 and will bet on it. I sir will take that bet straight up, name the stakes.
Do you actually pay your bets or are you a bet welcher?
Have a good day all
~ John Tyndall ~
On the flip side, at least One of the sinatories formerly from NASA is a meteorologist (for some years?)...see the last one. That counts for some climate experience on the signatory list.
BTW I noticed you say taxes are to low, what do you think they should be.
He said the same thing I said, only he was less terse and more diplomatic. :)
They would be if that had happened anywhere other than in your imagination. Fortunately for all concerned, what takes place in your imagination isn't anyone else's problem. :)
IOW, you heard no such thing from climate scientists.
Maybe you know more about the oceans than Dean Roemmich, John Gould or John Gibson. You should really send them an e-mail telling them what fools they are and how you through your vast knowledge of everything, you know better. I am sure they will get a good chuckle from your independent studies and conclusions.
I'm pretty sure that they are aware of the warming early in the 20th century --and far better acquainted with its causes then either you or me.
What was that about reading comprehension. LOL you failed again.
Have a good night Faildozer
The dead trees are (were) Fraser firs, killed by the balsam wooly aldegid. Of course, as the firs die other species that depended on them in whole or part are also dying.
Due to acid rain, acid fog, and ground level ozone, the spruces aren't doing terribly well, either. It's hard to see that in this pic, but many of the spruces are discolored.
So...you think that the land, which is roughly 30% of the Earth's surface, warmed enough to cause the global temperature to rise...while the oceans, which are roughly 70% of the Earth's surface cooled or remained the same temperature?
Tell it to the Marines! LOL
Still dancing around the issue a hand I see. Get back to me when you can provide evidence to prove these scientists wrong (ocean temp vs ocean temp). I won't hold my breath. It has been fun playing with you faildozer.
BTW I think if all these climate scientists already knew this there would be no need for this report.
Like I said you should write them and tell them you have the right answer. LMFAO
Link
Get back to me when you can follow a logical train of thought. It might take some practice, but it is well worth the effort. You'll no longer be distracted by shiny objects that look pretty...well, at least not as easily. LOL
Why you'll just fall for anything, won't you, you poor ol' thing? You seem especially prone to fall for cherry picking.
Nevertheless, I wonder how Spencer accounts for the fact that is very own UAH shows the following?
No, I'm afraid you've been had by crank "science" from a blog. I wonder why anyone even listens to Spencer at this point?
Poor little guy.
Therefore, if the Earth warmed the _______ warmed. See if you can guess what goes in the blank.
C'mon, at least try to be logical.
We haven't even gotten to the good part yet! LOL
Wowsers! I'm impressed with the depth of your desperation. Semantic ambiguity is your big chance? LOL
Then again, it really hasn't been going very well for climatrollogists lately, has it? Especially on this board. ;)
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