![[polar-bear+3.jpeg]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/polar-bear2b3.jpeg?w=300)
Published in the Journal of Animal Ecology
Climate change is making our environment ‘bluer’
The “colour” of our environment is becoming “bluer”, a change that could have important implications for animals’ risk of becoming extinct, ecologists have found. In a major study involving thousands of data points and published this week in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology, researchers examined how quickly or slowly animal populations and their environment change over time, something ecologists describe using “spectral colour”.
Ecologists have investigated the link between fluctuations in the environment and those of animal populations for the past 30 years. They describe fluctuations as a colour spectrum, where red signifies an environment or population that fluctuates more slowly over time (such as ocean temperature) and blue signifies more rapid fluctuations (such as changes in air temperature).
Existing models and theories suggest that the spectral colour of the environment should affect the spectral colour of animal populations. Now for the first time ecologists have assembled field data to confirm the theory.
Bernardo Garcia-Carreras and Dr Daniel Reuman of Imperial College London examined three large sets of data. They used the Global Population Dynamics Database, from which they extracted data on changes in population for 147 species of bird, mammal, insect, fish and crustacean over the past 30 years, and two sets of temperature data from the Climatic Research Unit and the Global Historical Climatology Network. The latter includes data collected from weather stations worldwide throughout the twentieth century.
The study not only confirmed that the colour of changes in the environment map onto the colour of changes in animal populations, but found that our environment is becoming “bluer”, in other words fluctuating more rapidly over time.
According to Dr Reuman: “We showed using field data for the first time that the colour of changes in the environment maps onto the colour of changes in populations: redder environments mean redder populations, and bluer environments mean bluer populations. We also found that the colour of the environment is changing – becoming bluer – apparently due to climate change.”
“The colour change refers to the change in ‘spectral colour’ but this does not mean that red means warmer temperatures. Spectral colour tells us how quickly or slowly temperature is oscillating over time. If the oscillations are comparatively slow, then we say that temperature has a ‘red’ spectrum, and if the changes are quick, then temperature is said to be ‘blue’. When we talk of temperature becoming ‘bluer’, we mean the oscillations in temperature are becoming faster over time,” explains Garcia-Carreras.
The results are important because previous studies show that the spectral colour of a population affects its extinction risk. Some simple models tell us that bluer populations – those that fluctuate more rapidly over time – are at less risk of extinction. This is because adverse conditions are more likely to be followed by better conditions when the environment is fluctuating more rapidly.
According to Dr Reuman: “Since it was previously known that the colour of changes in populations is related to extinction risk of the populations, our results show a way that climate change should impact the extinction risk of populations by affecting the colour of populations.”
While the study seems to provide some good news for species facing extinction, the researchers warn that this is offset by other pressures. “This apparent good news is tempered by the fact that habitat loss, overexploitation and other factors are likely more important drivers of extinction risk than the colour of temperature fluctuations,” Dr Reuman says.
Bernardo Garcia-Carreras and Daniel C. Reuman (2011), ‘An empirical link between the spectral colour of climate and the spectral colour of field populations in the context of climate change‘, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01833.x, is published in Journal of Animal Ecology on 6 April 2011.
Summary
1. The spectral colour of population dynamics and its causes have attracted much interest. The spectral colour of a time series can be determined from its power spectrum, which shows what proportion of the total variance in the time series occurs at each frequency. A time series with a red spectrum (a negative spectral exponent) is dominated by low-frequency oscillations, and a time series with a blue spectrum (a positive spectral exponent) is dominated by high-frequency oscillations.
2. Both climate variables and population time series are characterised by red spectra, suggesting that a population’s environment might be partly responsible for its spectral colour. Laboratory experiments and models have been used to investigate this potential link. However, no study using field data has directly tested whether populations in redder environments are redder.
3. This study uses the Global Population Dynamics Database together with climate data to test for this effect. We found that the spectral exponent of mean summer temperatures correlates positively and significantly with population spectral exponent.
4. We also found that over the last century, temperature climate variables on most continents have become bluer.
5. Although population time series are not long or abundant enough to judge directly whether their spectral colours are changing, our two results taken together suggest that population spectral colour may be affected by the changing spectral colour of climate variables. Population spectral colour has been linked to extinction; we discuss the potential implications of our results for extinction probability.
Perhaps they are trying to win this years ignobel prize.
So THAT”S why GrandMa’s hair has a blue tint??!!!
When has there ever been a sign in blue to indicate urgency or quick?
They should not violate tradition? A red alert warns of a quick and serious event. They describe red as slow and not urgent. That could be confusing since red is usually used to denote danger. Hunters, for instance, wear an orange vest to tell other hunters don’t shoot the orange vest or me. All hunters, with a license, know that. A stop sign is in red which means stop or else and all drivers and cops and judges know that as does any first grader.
Or maybe they think a color code is more convincing no matter the color. Just a thought.
Hopefully, the financial climate for stupid studies like this gets redder.
I know what happened- you aussie readers exported all your redheads! Filthy blueys all over the place now!
I suspect land change/use has more to do with a bluer spectral world than climate change. The blue animals might agree.
@-wws says:
April 6, 2011 at 5:58 am
“They are trying this slight of hand to hide the assumption that “Change” is Bad! Bad! Bad!”
No they are not. Perhaps you have misunderstood the point of the study because of an unfamiliarity with the outlook of biological ecologists.
In biology change is ALWAYS present and it has no qualitative value of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it is merely measured in terms of RATE of change.
That seems to be the error others have made in posting, the colour coding is merely a way of charaterising the rate of change, not some other quality that might be attributed to it.
Resource over-exploitation (ie the collapse of fish stocks) and the changing land use have caused very rapid ecological change even without any contribution from a changing global climate.
Climate change is a fact (but not unprecedented) and depending on how great the change, it will affect the environment accordingly. Whether it is detrimental is still speculative and certainly not answered in this study. The main question here; is AGW the culprit for climate change? I think not, at most AGW is a minor attribute to CC compared to what seems to be primarily an earth sun geophysical relationship also noticeable on other planets in our solar system.
They used CRU and GHCN – I guess we can save the animals by bodging these temperature records. It is a preposterous idea to equate these fluctuations to colour spectra. It creates a whole new meaningless data set. The “ology” sciences have an inferiority complex vis a vis the “hard” disciplines of physics, chemistry and mathematics and they use obscuring terminologies to hide simple ideas. The famous condensation of economics to “buy-low, sell-high” or three permutations of three words to condense psychology: “I am here”, “Here am I”, “Am I here?” poke fun at the obfuscations that riddle such disciplines.
The “Global Population Dynamics Database” suffers exactly the same problems as CRU and GHCN. Both are compiled by agenda driven post-normals with all of their greeny biases , is it a wonder that they have some correlation?
what the hell is the BBC doing funding climate research???????
“…“The colour change refers to the change in ‘spectral colour’ but this does not mean that red means warmer temperatures. Spectral colour tells us how quickly or slowly temperature is oscillating over time. If the oscillations are comparatively slow, then we say that temperature has a ‘red’ spectrum, and if the changes are quick, then temperature is said to be ‘blue’. When we talk of temperature becoming ‘bluer’, we mean the oscillations in temperature are becoming faster over time,” explains Garcia-Carreras….
This a critical paragraph. The key point here is that a noisier climate is more difficult to adapt to. Note that the issue is not temperature, nor is it warming or cooling trends. It has to do with oscillation – i.e. “noise.” Populations adapt through a number pathways: evolutionary [-genetic selection], developmental [physiological responses – e.g. growing more hair in cold climates], and migration as populations relocate geographically to follow more agreeable environmental conditions. “Preferred” paths tend to be correlated with individual longevity and size and for larger animals relocation tends to be a preferred means of adaptation to changing conditions. Even forests can “migrate” following better growing conditions – if the changes are consistent and take place slowly enough that new generations of trees have a chance to reach maturity. When the climate become “noisy,” oscillating abruptly and unpredictably, successful adaptive responses may be difficult. This very likely the primary reason that major extinction events tend to correlate with very abrupt changes in climate in the geological record.
Due to what evolutionary biologists call “punctuated equilibrium,” species generally evolve rapidly to fill new ecological niches; spend 90% of their existence at adaptational plateaus; and decline precipitously to extinction when abrupt environmental shifts including but not limited to climate-change render their inert gene pools mal-adapted, over-specialized.
Over time the average species of large mammal persists about 7-million years, including roughly half a million years to reach its peak, no more than 50 – 100,000 years to pass away. On lengthy time-scales, “high frequency” evolutionary turnover thus represents a feedback mechanism due not only to external conditions such as climate, but to inchoate Darwinian competition among contemporary species.
Given a rapidly evolved, hitherto unopposed species of large predator, existing populations vanish overnight. With them go whole networks of inter-dependent eco-systems, opening the way to yet more unpredictable growth-and-change. To call this “chaotic” –meaning “non-random but indeterminate”– is an understatement. Nature as a complex dynamic system goes her evolutionary way, and there is not one blessed thing anyone can do to “model” or otherwise predict the consequences in any way whatever.
I’ve been reading for years now that as America becomes “bluer” disaster is around the corner. I guess those in those “red” fly-over states can feel better now.
I’m kind of confused… what they are saying is that there are power-law descriptions of the temperature and the various animal populations and that these power-laws are changing significantly over 30 years. Call me crazy but I think that the power-law for the temperature should be governed by the physics and shouldn’t ought to change significantly unless you really mess the atmosphere up a *lot*.
Anyway, power-laws also describe noise processes. When they mean “getting redder” it can just as well mean “getting more strongly like a random walk” or “more like a slow ramp”. Likewise getting “bluer” could mean “getting more like white noise” or just “getting slightly less random walky”. If the power-laws are in fact already random walks then getting a little less random walky is not really much of a deal and probably meaningless without knowledge of the underlying physics (for the temperature) .
And fitting power laws is a total bitch if you don’t have clean data and lots of it. They should be using Allan variance to at least separate the various power law contributions. But correlating power-laws? Forget about it.
“…apparently due to climate change.”
Well of course. Isn’t it always apparent? Do they even need to point it out anymore?
Hopefully the BBC will soon produce a coloring book to teach children about this very serious pseudoscientific garbage… if they can color neatly within the lines they should get PhDs from East Anglia or Penn State.
There is a whole lot of money available for biology studies that purport to show damage to ecologies from AGW. Standards of publication are shockingly low. For example, a thirty-year period in this context is so short as to be ridiculous. The study would have been unpublishable 40 years ago.
Here’s a slightly more coherent presentation on the “blueness” of the world
Maybe this one will work
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Now, where’s my grant.
Seems to me that the climate fluctuated rapidly between 1870 to 1900.
Been there, fluctuated that.