Our Common Endangered Brook Trout

[RLeep2]

How many credentialed climatologists do we have posting here and more specifically, how many of them have weighed in on this thread?

I only ask because NWF-affiliated research in general has a pretty good track record. 40 or so years ago, they were the first to illustrate the likely link between excessive consumption of PCB contaminated Great Lakes salmonids and a range of birth defects and learning disabilities in children. Back in the 80's, they were also the first to definitively footprint the SO2/NOX emissions from TVA power plants to increasing acidification in first and second order streams and poorly-buffered stillwaters in the NE US.

Anybody here have that kind of track record? I know I sure don't...

All predictive science of this sort is far more accurate in general terms than in the specific. This is understood. There are a range of things that could result from this thing we call climate change. This too, is understood.

All the same, until I am convinced otherwise by somebody else's research or credentials, I'm inclined to give the most credence to what the NWF folks are saying about this. I've always found them to be pretty reliable without becoming all hysteric as sometimes happens with outfits like Sierra and NRDC, etc.

 

[pcray1231]

My credentials are not all that strong. I did an internship with the DOE, and my project was tracking climate anomalies and the causes. Largely it focused on trying to relate the effects of "events" on the ocean conveyor, and how those events can trigger other "events" many years later.

For instance a strong monsoon season near the Red Sea pushes a jut of salt out into the Indian Ocean. That lob of higher salinity can be tracked south along the African east coast. About 7 or 8 years later it will have an effect of the warm, salty "eddies" circling the Cape of Good Hope and engrained in the northward current on the west side of Africa, and have local climate effects there. About 30 years after the initial monsoon season it reaches the North Atlantic and changes the strength of the thermohaline circulation there, and hence produces some forcing on the Gulf Stream as well as the NAO. From there it goes deep to the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) current and we lose track of it, but the whole 3 ocean conveyor system reportedly takes about 500 years till that bit of water gets back around to the mouth of the Red Sea, and it's possible throughout that entire time that initial event has far reaching effects well downstream.

Those are generally local effects. Globally, there are a number of known cycles. There's a 3-5 year cycle associated with El Nino, strong 10-11 year cycle which is probably most closely related to sunspots, as the durations of those cycles match. There's another 30-35 year cycle and other cycles on the order of 100's of years, thousands, and on up to Milankovitch cycles which are on the order of hundreds of thousands of years and are the main forcing behind true ice ages and deglaciation. So you have known cycles, the total summation of which gives you a baseline, and then deviations from that baseline are unexplained and are cause for more research. Even of the cycles that are known, the causes of some are known but others are not, and the cause needs to be determined. Another area of study examines not the cause, but the specific impacts of those cycles. For instance, the effects of an El Nino on PA's climate. Which might vary if it's a strong or a weak El Nino, or east-based or west-based El Nino, or combined with a positive or negative NAO. Or the effect of sunspots on Atlantic hurricane activity.

I am a scientist, but these days my job has nothing whatsoever to do with climate. Though I do kinda try to keep up on things just out of personal interest.

 

[fayettenamese]

The below climate date is from ice core samples covering only the last 425,000 years. I did some quick research, and trout and char have been around for 15-20 million years, which is 35 times as many years of climate variation as is shown in the graph. These dramatic climate changes, both COLD to the point of all fresh water in feeder streams freezing solid to the ground, and HOT to the point of rivers turning into successive, unconnected pools have been survived by trout and char and those millions of years of evolution have produced the species we have today. We should always try our best to keep the environment free of all pollution and emissions.

 

[fayettenamese]

I am a physicist, with an additional BS in meteorology. I remember one remark made by my professor in an Advanced Climatology class... While discussing climate change extending into the realm of paleoclimatology, my professor reminded us that with warmer global temperatures comes ice cap melting, which means more liquid water in the water cycle. More liquid water in the water cycle when the global temperature is elevated means more evaporation which means more clouds. A certain point is reached when clouds become so prevalent that a significant amount of insolation is blocked, thus starting to reverse the temperature trend back toward cooler average temperatures.

 

[pcray1231]

There's another feedback mechanism. Though note that clouds may indeed reduce daytime heating, they also reduce nighttime cooling. And that effect is also short lasting, so it can't reverse trends, merely oppose them and thus slow them.

Fayette, it's true that brook trout have survived those cycles. But certainly not in every location. Nobody suggested brook trout would go extinct globally. Merely from PA. Which they have in the past, likely multiple times.

The notion is BS in that it exaggerates the effect of what is, geologically speaking, small scale climate changes (at least what is projected by 2100). Just not for the reasons you stated. Your argument is valid for why the species will not go extinct even with larger scale changes. But animal ranges can and do change with the climate.

P.S. You're graph depicts glaciation advances and retreats all within the CURRENT ice age. Go back further, out of the current ice age, and things were much, much warmer to where you'd have to readjust the scale by a lot and those spikes become minor low level noise. Most of Earths history, there was zero permanent ice.

 

[fayettenamese]

"P.S. You're graph depicts glaciation advances and retreats all within the CURRENT ice age. Go back further, out of the current ice age, and things were much, much warmer to where you'd have to readjust the scale by a lot and those spikes become minor low level noise. Most of Earths history, there was zero permanent ice."

Exactly, thats why I said that it would take a time scale 35 times larger than the one I included to cover the amount of time that trout/char have inhabited the earth.

 

[pcray1231]

Those oscillations on the order of tens and hundreds of thousands of years in your graph are almost perfectly explained by Milankovitch cycles, and I do mean nearly perfectly. Since it's cosmic, it's very predictable. Deviations have occured, mostly due to volcanic origins, and we have a nearly perfect record since it's all contained within this ice age, hence leaving ash layers in ice cores, which can be matched chemically to specific volcanoes, and then verified by radiocarbon dating the igneous rocks at those volcanoes. Very cool.

Interestingly, though, we started deviating from what should happen not 150 years ago with the industrial revolution, but a few thousand years ago. Why? Nobody knows for sure but many suspect that too is human induced, coinciding with the onset of agriculture. It's argued whether it's deforestation, burning of wood, or domesticated animal farts fed a non natural diet. But yes, it has accelerated in the last 150 years, which is what they attribute to greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. Perhaps even avoiding a renewed glaciation which should really have started in the last few decades, and they can happen quick. But despite cosmic forcing we are still warming.

That works for explaining variations within an ice age or warm period, but doesn't explain the flipping back and forth between wholesale ice ages and warm periods, on the order of millions or billions of years. That's harder to explain. Some argue the sun has nuclear cycles. Some argue it has to do with locations of continents. The most straightforward explanation is that the current state, with Antarctica sitting on the south pole and the north pole a sea but largely landlocked, the global sea currents are prevented from reaching the true poles. Hence heat cannot be transferred from equator to pole, it is stopped at lower latitudes. Hence the poles stay cold and we are in an ice age, although with a warmer equator. If that's correct, the current ice age will last until the continents move far enough to allow an ocean current to truly reach the poles. That theory also explains why Antarctica is colder than the arctic, as in the current state there is at least a little heat transferred to the north pole.

What it doesn't explain is Snowball Earths, when glaciers made it to the equator. As the ocean current thing would demand warmer poles to equate with a cooler equator, and colder poles with a warmer equator. Perhaps a separate cause. Like a meteor strike. Or a more complicated theory involving continents near the equator where it's wetter, speeding weathering and thus carbon sequestration in the oceans, leading to lower CO2, thus cooling. And when it reaches some critical point the ice reflects more sunlight, which leads to cooling, which leads to more reflected sun, etc. As ice gets to lower latitudes the effect strenthens as there's more solar radiation to reflect. Runaway feedback effect, overpowering other forms of feedback. That, of course, likely would spare only microbial life on Earth. Not even brook trout would survive. 🙂

 

[Chaz]

ryansheehan wrote:
Brook trout have survived many climate changes, not to go political but the heating and cooling of the planet has gone on long before us and will continue after us. I feel like more focus on things we can control, like clean water and stocking over natives (just to name a few) would yield much better results. Not looking to get into an argument about global warming just wonder about how limited resources can have the greatest effect on the population.

While that's true, we have to do what we can. And what we can do is plant trees along our streams and keep polluters at bay.