New story in Science and Health from Time: New Study Shows That When it Comes to Pesticides and Kids, the EPA Has Looked the Other Way New Study Shows That When it Comes to Pesticides and Kids, the EPA Has Looked the Other Way

It’s easy to lose count of all of the pesticides that are sprayed on crops in the U.S., and well-nigh impossible to know all of the names (dichloropropene and pyraclostrobin and spinetoram and on and on). But it’s not hard to guess who gets hit hardest by all of these chemicals: kids, whose brain, nervous and hormonal systems are still developing at the time of exposure. What’s more, a new pesticide introduced today will have fewer years to build up in the tissues of, say, a 50-year old, compared to a child who will accumulate a lifetime load of the stuff.

That’s the biggest reason that, in 1996, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). The legislation represented one of the most effective crackdowns on pesticides in the food supply to date, requiring the Environmental Protection Agency not simply to establish a safe threshold of exposure for the population as a whole, but to limit permissible levels much further—10-fold further in fact—to ensure that children are protected too. The legislation benefits everyone of course: Ten times less pyraclostrobin on your apple is a good thing no matter how old you are, but it’s children who are the most important beneficiaries.

But a law is only as good as its enforcement and a new study conducted by the Environmental Working Group, —a nonprofit advocacy organization—and published in the journal Environmental Health found that when it comes to the FQPA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is laying down on the job. The group surveyed 47 non-organophosphate pesticides—a category that tends to persist in soils—and found that the 10-fold safety standard was being applied only to five of them.

“The FQPA was a revolution in how we think about pesticides’ effects on children,” said Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook in a statement accompanying the release of the study, “but it does no good if the EPA doesn’t use it.”

As of publication, the EPA has not yet responded to questions sent by TIME.

The study looked back at FQPA enforcement from as early as 2011, during the Obama administration—generally seen as an environmentally friendly presidency—and saw the same spotty pesticide enforcement even then. But the Obama White House did take some proactive steps, seeking to extend the 10-fold standard to organophosphate pesticides as well, which break down relatively quickly, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but while they are around can be even more toxic than other varieties of pesticides, affecting the nervous system in much the way sarin and other nerve gasses do.

Under the Trump Administration, however, the Obama ruling was reversed for the most widely used organophosphate, known as chlorpyrifos. Nonetheless, Corteva Agriscience, the nation’s largest manufacturer of the chemical, under pressure from multiple states that are banning its use, announced on Feb. 6 that it would voluntarily agree to stop producing it.

It’s a manifestly good thing that in that one case, market forces were sufficient to stop a bad chemical from getting into the food supply. But it’s a manifestly bad thing that in a far larger share of cases, apparently the health of America’s children does not have the same power in Washington.

“With the FQPA legislation, Congress clearly gave the EPA the power to protect children’s health from pesticides,” says Olga Naidenko, vice president of science investigations at the Environmental Working Group, and lead author of the paper. “The EPA should be able to fully use this authority without waiting for additional instructions, if the EPA leadership decides to do so.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: Climate Change is Decimating the Chinstrap Penguins of Antarctica Climate Change is Decimating the Chinstrap Penguins of Antarctica

Chinstrap penguins are exquisitely adapted to their environment. They live and breed in some of the world’s harshest conditions, nesting in the windblown, rocky coves of the Antarctic Peninsula, a strip of land comprising the northernmost part of the frigid continent. In water they are precision hunters, darting after krill, the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that are their sole food source, utilizing barbed tongues engineered for catching the slipperiest of prey. On land, these 2-2.5-foot-tall flightless birds are prodigious mountaineers, able to scale rocky escarpments in spite of their ungainly waddle. Their perfect adaptation to local conditions makes them the ideal barometer for the future of the region. If anything changes in the marine environment, the health of chinstrap penguins will be one of the most reliable indicators. They are the canaries of the Southern Ocean.

And these endearing, black and white emissaries from Antarctic waters are starting to disappear.

Christian Åslund —Greenpeace and TIMEScientists Noah Strycker and Steven Forrest from Stony Brook University counting penguins on Snow Island in the South Shetlands of Antarctica, on Jan. 31, 2020.

Scientists conducting a chinstrap census along the Antarctic Peninsula have discovered drastic declines in many colonies, with some seeing population reductions of up to 77% since they were last surveyed, about 50 years ago. The independent researchers, who hitched a ride on a Greenpeace expedition to the region, found that every single one of the 32 colonies surveyed on Elephant Island, a major chinstrap outpost, had declined. Overall, the island’s total chinstrap population had dropped by more than half, from 122,550 breeding pairs in 1971 to 52,786 in January 2020. “Such significant declines suggest that the Southern Ocean’s ecosystem is fundamentally changed from 50 years ago, and that the impacts of this are rippling up the food web to species like chinstrap penguins,” says Heather J. Lynch, associate professor of ecology & evolution at Stony Brook University in upstate New York, who designed the study.

“There is something broken in the Southern Ocean,” adds ornithologist Noah Strycker, a member of the penguin census team, and the author of the 2015 book The Thing with Feathers. “Our best guess on why that could be is climate change, which we know is hitting the Antarctic Peninsula region harder than…practically anywhere else in the world except the Arctic.” Warming waters reduce the sea ice and the phytoplankton that krill depend upon for feeding and survival. Ocean acidification, a side effect of increasing global carbon emissions, also impacts their ability to reproduce.

Christian Åslund —Greenpeace and TIMEA chinstrap penguin nesting at Spigot Peak, in Orne Harbor on the Antarctic peninsula, on Feb. 6, 2020.

For the past five weeks Stony Brook scientists have joined forces with robotics and drone specialists from Boston’s Northeastern University to survey relatively unstudied chinstrap penguin colonies along the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Chinstraps prefer rocky, windblown sites for nesting, because they provide the best conditions for keeping eggs safe and dry. Those conditions make research difficult: the scientists endured freezing temperatures, wind, rain and snow to reach the coastal rookeries by small inflatable motorboats, then scrambled among the colonies counting penguins by hand. The robotics team backed up the survey with drone footage. When they return to the lab, members of that team will use the findings to teach computers how to identify nests using artificial intelligence for help in future surveys.

Christian Åslund —Greenpeace and TIMEYang Liu and Vikrant Shah, from North Eastern University, launch a drone from a Greenpeace inflatable. They will later use machine learning to do an automated count of penguin colonies on Elephant Island. The drone counts are later compared to the manual counts done by another team of scientists.

Christian Åslund —Greenpeace and TIMEScientist Noah Strycker from Stony Brook University Scientist uses a clicker to count chinstrap penguins on Quinton Point, Anvers Island in the Antarctic, on Feb. 4, 2020.

The researchers surveyed 56 colonies in 37 days. So far, they’ve only released numbers from the Elephant Island sites, which were the first to be surveyed. The final report will be published in a few weeks. But those initial findings appear to be consistent across most colonies. “From whatever limited data we have from the 1980s, chinstrap populations appear to be down by over half,” says biologist Steve Forrest, the team lead on the expedition.

On Jan. 31, 2020, 26 days into the expedition, Forrest motored around the President’s Head promontory on Snow Island to scout for potential survey sites. Some 30 years ago, researchers documented a colony there, but Forrest had heard rumors from passing boats that it had disappeared. The sea was too rough for a census that day, but it didn’t matter. Peering through a pair of binoculars, Forrest saw no evidence that there were any penguins left on the island at all. “I was hoping that we might find the colony after all,” he says. “But not finding one is more along the lines of what we expected.” Some of the older surveys in the more difficult-to-reach areas are unreliable — conducted at a distance, by boat — so an exact assessment of how much has changed in the last three decades is impossible. Still, Forrest says, he is confident that chinstrap populations are declining, particularly in the South Shetland Islands (including Elephant Island) off the coast of the Peninsula. “I saw a lot of abandoned nesting places, so I am inclined to believe that it is a real decline, but the precise extent is uncertain.”

Christian Åslund —Greenpeace and TIMEA chinstrap penguin colony on Elephant Island, Antarctica on Jan. 17, 2020.

While the numbers of chinstraps may be on the wane, the researchers saw a marked increase in gentoo penguin populations. Gentoos, which have red-orange beaks and lack the distinctive black band around the throat that gives chinstraps their names, are much more flexible about what they eat and the conditions under which they breed. This means that they can more easily adapt to changes in their environment. Forrest calls them “climate change winners” for their ability to thrive in conditions that threaten chinstraps— at least in the short term. Strycker calls the process by which the upstarts take over chinstrap areas “gentoofication.”

Strycker, a committed birder who chronicled his attempt to spot more than half the planet’s bird species in a single year in a 2017 book called Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World admits that ultimately, it’s not even about the penguins. It’s about krill. Krill are the foundation of the marine food system — the fish that eat them are the fodder for the fish on which almost every ocean predator relies. The fish that we humans eat also primarily rely on krill as a food source. If krill populations are unhealthy, it means trouble down the line for everyone else. But krill, in their krillions, are hard to study.

Christian Åslund —Greenpeace and TIMEthe fluke of a humpback whale at Anvers Island, Antarctica, on Feb. 3, 2020.

Christian Åslund —Greenpeace and TIMEIcebergs outside the coast of Anvers Island in Antarctica.

That’s where the chinstraps come in. Like certain whale species, chinstraps are krill specialists, but they are relatively easier to track compared to whales, with their erratic migration patterns. Chinstrap penguins reliably return to the same rookeries year after year to breed, so by assessing colony health over time, scientists can get a better idea of how the krill they depend on are doing. Which is “why we should care about a bunch of penguins going missing from a remote island that no one’s ever heard of,” says Strycker. “Penguins give us an idea about what is going on in the ocean around us. The ocean processes that are changing in the Antarctic are similar to the processes that are changing everywhere else in the world.” Humans may not have evolved to catch krill the way chinstraps do, but our fate is tied to the tiny crustaceans all the same.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Solar Orbiter Blasts Off to Capture a First Look at the Sun’s Elusive Poles Solar Orbiter Blasts Off to Capture a First Look at the Sun’s Elusive Poles

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Europe and NASA’s Solar Orbiter rocketed into space Sunday night on an unprecedented mission to capture the first pictures of the sun’s elusive poles.

The $1.5 billion spacecraft will join NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched 1 1/2 years ago, in coming perilously close to the sun in order to unveil its secrets.

While Solar Orbiter won’t venture close enough to penetrate the sun’s corona, or crown-like outer atmosphere, like Parker, it will maneuver into a unique out-of-plane orbit that will take it over both poles, never photographed before. Together with powerful ground observatories, the sun-staring space duo will be like an orchestra, according to Gunther Hasinger, the European Space Agency’s science director.

“Every instrument plays a different tune, but together they play the symphony of the sun,” Hasinger said.

Solar Orbiter was made in Europe, along with nine science instruments. NASA provided the 10th instrument and arranged the late-night launch from Cape Canaveral.

Nearly 1,000 scientists and engineers from across Europe gathered with their U.S. colleagues under a full moon as United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket blasted off, illuminating the sky for miles around. Crowds also jammed nearby roads and beaches.

The rocket was visible for four full minutes after liftoff, a brilliant star piercing the night sky. Europe’s project scientist Daniel Mueller was thrilled, calling it “picture perfect.” His NASA counterpart, scientist Holly Gilbert, exclaimed, “One word: Wow.”

Within an hour, the satellite separated neatly from the upper stage and was flying on its own.

Solar Orbiter — a boxy 4,000-pound (1,800-kilogram) spacecraft with spindly instrument booms and antennas — will swing past Venus in December and again next year, and then past Earth, using the planets’ gravity to alter its path. Full science operations will begin in late 2021, with the first close solar encounter in 2022 and more every six months.

At its closest approach, Solar Orbiter will come within 26 million miles (42 million kilometers) of the sun, well within the orbit of Mercury.

Parker Solar Probe, by contrast, has already passed within 11.6 million miles (18.6 million kilometers) of the sun, an all-time record, and is shooting for a slim gap of 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) by 2025. But it’s flying nowhere near the poles. That’s where Solar Orbiter will shine.

The sun’s poles are pockmarked with dark, constantly shifting coronal holes. They’re hubs for the sun’s magnetic field, flipping polarity every 11 years.

Solar Orbiter’s head-on views should finally yield a full 3-D view of the sun, 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from our home planet.

“With Solar Observatory looking right down at the poles, we’ll be able to see these huge coronal hole structures,” said Nicola Fox, director of NASA’s heliophysics division. “That’s where all the fast solar wind comes from … It really is a completely different view.”

To protect the sensitive instruments from the sun’s blistering heat, engineers devised a heat shield with an outer black coating made of burned bone charcoal similar to what was used in prehistoric cave paintings. The 10-foot-by-8-foot (3-meter-by-2.4-meter heat shield is just 15 inches (38 centimeters) thick, and made of titanium foil with gaps in between to shed heat. It can withstand temperatures up to nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (530 degrees Celsius).

Embedded in the heat shield are five peepholes of varying sizes that will stay open just long enough for the science instruments to take measurements in X-ray, ultraviolet, visible and other wavelengths.

The observations will shed light on other stars, providing clues as to the potential habitability of worlds in other solar systems.

Closer to home, the findings will help scientists better predict space weather, which can disrupt communications.

“We need to know how the sun affects the local environment here on Earth, and also Mars and the moon when we move there,” said Ian Walters, project manager for Airbus Defence and Space, which designed and built the spacecraft. “We’ve been lucky so far the last 150 years,” since a colossal solar storm last hit. “We need to predict that. We just can’t wait for it to happen.”

The U.S.-European Ulysses spacecraft, launched in 1990, flew over the sun’s poles, but from farther afield and with no cameras on board. It’s been silent for more than a decade.

Europe and NASA’s Soho spacecraft, launched in 1995, is still sending back valuable solar data.

Altogether, more than a dozen spacecraft have focused on the sun over the past 30 years. It took until now, however, for technology to allow elaborate spacecraft like Parker and Solar Orbiter to get close without being fried.

Fox considers it “a golden age” for solar physics.

“So much science still yet to do,” she said, “and definitely a great time to be a heliophysicist.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: Record Temperatures Hit Antarctica as Region Experiences ‘Dramatic Changes’ Record Temperatures Hit Antarctica as Region Experiences ‘Dramatic Changes’

The temperature at one research base in Antarctica reached a record-breaking 18.3 degrees Celsius (65 Fahrenheit) on Thursday, almost a full degree above the previous high set five years ago.

Argentine scientists on the Esperanza base who confirmed the reading said that wasn’t the only record broken this week. The nation’s Marambio site registered the highest temperature for the month of February since 1971. Thermometers there hit 14.1 Celsius, above the previous February 2013 reading of 13.8 Celsius.

The reports are shocking, but not surprising, said Frida Bengtsson, who is leading a expedition to the Antarctic for the environmental group Greenpeace.

“We’ve been in the Antarctic for the last month, documenting the dramatic changes this part of the world is undergoing as our planet warms,” she said in an email. “In the last month, we’ve seen penguin colonies sharply declining under the impacts of climate change in this supposedly pristine environment.”

Antarctica is among the fastest-warming regions in the planet, with the Antarctic Peninsula, where the Argentine bases are located, warming particularly quickly, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Average temperatures on the continent have risen almost 3 degree Celsius over the past 50 years, and during that time glaciers along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated.

WMO experts will now investigate whether the warm event recorded by Argentine scientists is a weather phenomenon known as foehn. That is a common event in Alpine regions that often involves high winds at altitude and the rapid warming of air as it heads down slopes or peaks, driven by significant air pressure differences, the WMO said in a statement.

The WMO will also determine whether the temperature extreme is a new record for the entire Antarctic landmass. The Signy island in the Antarctic region, which includes everywhere south of 60 degrees latitude, recorded an all-time high temperature of 19.8 Celsius in January 1982. The average annual temperature ranges from about -10 Celsius on the Antarctic coast to -60 Celsius at the highest points of the interior.

—With assistance from Thomas Mulier.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics

A previously unknown strain of coronavirus has dominated headlines in recent weeks, and alarmed public health officials with its rapid spread and virulent nature. But it’s really no surprise to the scientists who study infectious disease: it’s just one of several pathogens that have the potential to reach calamitous status.

I have no evidence that climate change triggered this particular virus to jump from animals to humans at this particular time, or that a warmer planet has helped it spread. That said, it’s pretty clear that, broadly speaking, climate change is likely to lead to an uptick in future epidemics caused by viruses and other pathogens. Scientists have understood for decades that climate change would change the way diseases spread, but, as the planet warms, those hypotheses are being tested and scientists are learning in real time. There are many links between climate change and infectious diseases, but I’m going to focus on one particularly novel—and concerning—area of knowledge: how rising temperatures are making our natural immune systems less effective.

Our bodies are amazing disease-fighting machines. One adaptation goes a long way: our warm body temperature can by itself shut down all sorts of unwanted invasions. When a pathogen enters our body, we often get a fever, warming us up even more to fight off disease. Fevers stimulate the immune system and, ideally, the heat creates an environment where it’s difficult for pathogens to survive.

But, as pathogens are exposed to gradually warmer temperatures in the natural world, they become better equipped to survive the high temperature inside the human body. “Every time we have a very hot day, we have a selection event,” says Arturo Casadevall, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The pathogens that survive—and reproduce—are better adapted to higher temperatures, including those in our bodies. And, with that, one of our body’s primary defense mechanisms diminishes in effectiveness.

This is not a theoretical, far-off concern. Last year, Casadevall and colleagues documented in the journal mBio how Candida auris (a fungus that gets into the bloodstream, leading to a range of ailments) emerged simultaneously in patients in three different isolated places—southern Asia, Venezuela and South Africa—between 2012 and 2015. In our globalized world, diseases are often transported by human carriers who hop on planes, but in this case the scientists concluded that similar changing climatic conditions in each of these places likely drove the simultaneous development. It’s hard to say how widespread this effect could be, Casadevall says, but there’s no reason to think that it would be limited to fungi like Candida auris.

The strain of coronavirus that’s spreading now is different than Candida for many reasons, but its likely animal vector—bats—provides an interesting example of how temperatures relate to the spread of infectious disease. Like humans, bats are mammals that maintain a warm body temperature that protect them from disease. But while our body temperature rests around 98.6°F and spikes a few degrees when we’re sick, bats’ body temperatures can regularly jump to as high as 105°F. That means they can carry a whole slew of pathogens without suffering from them. In the near future, as global temperatures inch up, bats will continue to be protected by their body heat, while the pathogens they carry are better able to harm us.

For decades, scientists have recognized that climate change would lead to a range of public health consequences. A 1992 report from the National Academy of Sciences, for example, cited a number of ways climate change could lead to the spread of infectious disease and described the lack of resources devoted to studying the impact of climate change on disease as “disturbing.” Four years later, a widely-cited paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association warned that climate change could increase the spread of everything from malnutrition to malaria, and called for concerted study between doctors, climate scientists and social scientists. That same year the World Health Organization published a 300-page tome on the topic, looking at a slew of ties between climate and health, but at the same time noting that the links are “complex and multifactorial.”

We know more today than we did then, but there’s still a lot we don’t know. When Arctic permafrost melts, what pathogens that have been buried for millennia will be released into the atmosphere—and can we combat them? What will the loss of entire communities, countries and ways of life do to the human psyche? How far will disease-carrying mosquitoes currently isolated to the tropics roam as their range shifts?

Scientists are scrambling to find answers to these questions and many other “known unknowns,” but many unknown unknowns undoubtedly remain—and, in some ways, that’s what I find most terrifying.

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A version of this article was originally published in TIME’s climate newsletter, One.Five. Click here to sign up to receive these stories early.

New story in Science and Health from Time: NASA Astronaut Christina Koch Returns Safely From History-Making 328-Day Mission NASA Astronaut Christina Koch Returns Safely From History-Making 328-Day Mission

(MOSCOW) — NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who has spent nearly 11 months in orbit on the longest spaceflight by a woman, landed safely in Kazakhstan on Thursday along with two of her International Space Station crewmates.

The Soyuz capsule carrying Koch, along with station Commander Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos’ Alexander Skvortsov, touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 3:12 p.m. (0912 GMT).

Koch wrapped up a 328-day mission on her first flight into space, providing researchers the opportunity to observe the effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman. The study is important since NASA plans to return to the moon under the Artemis program and prepare for the human exploration of Mars.

Koch smiled and gave a thumbs-up as support crew helped her get out of the capsule and placed her in a chair for a quick post-flight check-up alongside her crewmates. Russian space officials said they were in good shape.

Koch, who grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and now lives near the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston, Texas, with her husband, Bob, told The Associated Press last month that taking part in the first all-female spacewalk was the highlight of her mission.

Koch said she and fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir appreciated that the Oct. 18 spacewalk “could serve as an inspiration for future space explorers.”

Parmitano and Skvortsov spent 201 days in space.

After preliminary medical evaluations, the crew will be flown by Russian helicopters to the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. Koch and Parmitano will then board a NASA plane bound for Cologne, Germany, where Parmitano will be greeted by European space officials before Koch proceeds home to Houston.

Skvortsov will be flown to the Star City Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Newly-Released NOAA Emails Show Anger and Confusion Around Trump’s ‘Doctored’ Hurricane Dorian Map Newly-Released NOAA Emails Show Anger and Confusion Around Trump’s ‘Doctored’ Hurricane Dorian Map

Newly-released documents from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show officials reacting with frustration to President Donald Trump’s repeated claim last fall that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, despite the fact that scientists inside the agency disagreed with him.

The documents — which include over 1,000 emails — were released late Friday night in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by BuzzFeed News and other publications. BuzzFeed News Investigative Reporter Jason Leopold posted a Twitter thread of his findings on Friday night.

BREAKING #FOIA: At 10 pm EST tonight, NOAA released hundreds of pages of documents in response to my and other #FOIA requests about Hurricane Dorian and Sharpiegate.

A late night dump from NOAA! Hmm wonder what's in here.

Uploading docs now.

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) February 1, 2020

 

Back in early September, Hurricane Dorian was headed towards the U.S. after devastating the Bahamas and killing dozens. On Sept. 1, President Trump tweeted that Hurricane Dorian was on a path to hit multiple southern states, including Alabama. (Dorian did not end up hitting Alabama, but skirted the coast of Florida and Georgia.)

The National Weather Service (NWS) in Birmingham, Ala., quickly responded that he was wrong, tweeting, “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”

Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east. #alwx

— NWS Birmingham (@NWSBirmingham) September 1, 2019

The President then doubled down on his claim that Alabama was at risk. On Sept. 4, he gave an update on the storm while sitting in front of a map that appeared to have been altered with a black marker to make it seem like Alabama might be hit.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesPresident Trump references a map with the storm’s forecast that appears to have been altered by a black marker to extend the hurricane’s range to include Alabama. The photo was taken on Sept. 04, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Public backlash ensued, and the moment was swiftly deemed #sharpiegate on social media. On Sept. 6, NOAA released a statement that seemed to back the White House and disown the Birmingham station’s tweet.

The unsigned statement read, “From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama. The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”

Many experts — such as a former NOAA chief operating officer and a former branch chief of NOAA’s Hurricane Specialist Unit — decried the statement on social media.

The newly-released emails uncovered by the FOIA request show that there was also confusion, frustration and anger inside the agency as the controversy played out.

Emails on Sept. 4 show officials reacting to the President’s apparently-altered map, writing, “Note that the [National Hurricane Center] forecast product includes an extra black line over Alabama. Do we know what day this product was from, and whether the AL portion was included on our original product?”

Another email from an hour later shows officials being told to not to publicly respond to the White House’s claims about the storm’s path.

Multiple emails show that some NOAA officials believed the White House doctored the image of Dorian’s path. An email from NOAA communications official Corey Pieper confirming that “yes, that [advisory] was doctored.” Another email from Sept. 4 shows officials discussing a press request, asking, “How do you want to handle this one? Looks like someone at the WH drew with a market on the images of our official forecast.”

WOW!! BIG FIND in the NOAA #FOIA document dump tonight by @chrisgeidner re: Hurricane Dorian and the map Trump showed during the WH briefing

"Yes that was doctored" pic.twitter.com/DOUBKl5Vii

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) February 1, 2020

 

Another Sept. 4 email discussing a press request said simply: “HELP!!!”

THIS email from NOAA's PAO and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen following Trump's remarks about Hurricane Dorian last September

From NOAA's late night #FOIA dump pic.twitter.com/oiRT2fdpvt

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) February 1, 2020

 

More emails confirm that people inside NOAA thought the White House doctored the Sept. 4 map. In one email from Sept. 5, NOAA official Makeda Okolo writes, “Apparently the President is convinced that Alabama was in the path of Dorian and someone altered a NOAA map (with a sharpie) to convince folks.”

Benjamin Friedman, NOAA’s Deputy Under Secretary for Operations, responds, “yep, crazy.”

On Sept. 6, in response to NOAA’s statement disavowing the NWS Birmingham tweet correcting the President, NOAA employee Alek Krautmann writes to communications official Scott Smullen, “I’m reaching out just to help provide feedback from the agency. This statement is deeply upsetting to NOAA employees that have worked the hurricane and not fully accurate based on the timeline in question.”

 

On Sept. 7, NOAA acting Chief Scientist Craig McLean also addresses the statement. In an email to other top officials he writes, “For an agency founded upon and recognized for determining scientific truths, trusted by the public and responsible in law to put forward important science information, I find it unconscionable that an anonymous voice inside of NOAA would be found to castigate a dutiful, correct, and loyal NWS Forecaster who spoke the truth.”

“What concerns me most is that this Administration is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President,” the letter goes on.

WHOA!

Hell of an email from NOAA official Craig McLean to NOAA's chief and other top officials:

"What concerns me most is that this Administration is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent
political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President" pic.twitter.com/mviytsFMGi

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) February 1, 2020

 

Email exchanges from later that week show how frustrated officials were with the White House’s discussion of the storm.

NOAA Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction Dr. Neil Jacobs wrote in an email, “You have no idea how hard I’m fighting to keep politics out of science. We are an objective science agency, and we won’t and never will base any decision on anything other than science.”

Another official wrote, “People across agency are hurting… not just those directly involved. Some employees have lost their minds I fear. Trying to maintain calm and focus[.]”

After posting a thread of some of his findings, Leopold tweeted, “I’ve been waiting 3 years to see if I could use #FOIA to get a candid look inside a govt agency that found itself in turmoil over something Trump tweeted. Never thought it would be NOAA.”

I've been waiting 3 years to see if I could use #FOIA to get a candid look inside a govt agency that found itself in turmoil over something Trump tweeted.

Never thought it would be NOAAhttps://t.co/8NkL0R2fSS

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) February 1, 2020

The White House and NOAA did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.