Ithaca, NY–Using data on 77 North American migratory bird species from the eBird citizen-science program, scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology say that, in as little as four decades, it may be very difficult to predict how climate change will affect migratory bird populations and the ecosystems they inhabit. Their conclusions are presented in a paper published in the journal Ecography.
“Climates have natural variation and we’re moving rapidly into territory where the magnitude of climate change will consistently exceed this variation,” says lead author and Cornell Lab researcher Frank La Sorte. “There will be no historic precedent for these new climates, and migratory bird populations will increasingly encounter ‘novel’ climatic conditions. The most likely outcome will be a period of ecological disruption as migratory birds and other species try to respond or adapt to these new conditions.”
Cornell Lab scientists generated new climate models incorporating multiple sources of data. This produced a timeline indicating when and where migratory bird populations are likely to be significantly affected by novel climates during each phase of their annual life cycles. It’s not that far off:
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- — Last 40 to 50 years of this century. During this period, migrants such as the Black-and-white Warbler, are likely to first experience novel climates on their tropical wintering grounds (regions south of Florida) and also during the late summer on their breeding grounds in the North American temperate zone (above the nation’s midsection).
— First 50 years of the next century. This is when novel climates are likely to emerge for birds that winter in the subtropics–the southern half of the U.S.
The study authors conclude that by the middle of the next century migratory bird populations will experience novel climates during all phases of their annual life cycles.
La Sorte and co-authors considered minimum and maximum temperatures, and precipitation in the Western Hemisphere, week by week, for 280 years, from 2021 through 2300, under the worst-case scenario: continued high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. La Sorte says this is the first study to use a combination of climate variables to estimate when novel climates will first emerge, and it is the first study to examine the full annual cycle implications for a large number of migratory bird species.
“It’s not surprising that novel climates will be first encountered in the tropics,” says La Sorte. “There’s little variation in tropical climates, so even a small change in climate can generate highly novel conditions. It is surprising to find that on these species’ breeding grounds, novel climates will emerge roughly 40 to 50 years earlier during the second half of the breeding season. This is a critical phase of these species’ life cycle when adult and juvenile birds are transitioning from breeding to migration.”
The three data sources used for the study were 13 years of observations from the eBird program (2004-2016), climate projections from the most recent International Panel on Climate Change report, and NOAA data used to estimate climatic variation over a 60-year period. What constitutes a “novel” climate will depend on each region’s historical norms for that season.
“One reason we are considering novel climates is that current ecological projections under climate change tend to be unrealistic,” explains La Sorte. “We can’t reliably predict how birds or other species will respond to novel climates. In this study, we document when in the future this uncertainty is likely to become a significant factor that could adversely affect migratory bird populations.”
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Reference:
Frank A. La Sorte, Daniel Fink, Alison Johnston (2019) Time of emergence of novel climates for North American migratory bird populations. Ecography.
This research was funded by The Leon Levy Foundation, The Wolf Creek Charitable Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a Microsoft Azure Research Award, and the National Science Foundation.
From EurekAlert! Public Release: 5-Mar-2019
Given the accelerating changes in the Earth’s magnetic field and the changing location of magnetic north, our little feathered friends have bigger problems then climate change, if their biological GPS becomes unreliable and they have no backup systems. On the positive side, the birds have survived magnetic field reversals in past and I am very sure they will survive such reversals in the future.
This is simply propaganda to counter all the bad press windmills get for chopping up birds.
“Migrants that winter in the subtropics are projected to encounter novel climates during the first half of the next century.” Gulf of Mexico will be entirely tropical before then, no need to migrate.
The new buzzword is ‘NOVEL.’ Never read anything in Ecography, but it is spin-off from Oikos, which had a decent history.
Possibly a better paper that they should have read first, how often do you see “weak predictor.” Open Access, unlike theirs. —“….niche breadth estimated at the regional level is a weak predictor of species’ global niche breadth and range size.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.03495
HD Hoese
I suspect ‘Novel’ may be the new climate change.
The alarmists backed away from ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change’ now it’s likely to be ‘Novel Climate’.
Catastrophic Novel Climate Change doesn’t have quite the same alarmist ring though.
“Climates have natural variation and we’re moving rapidly into territory where the magnitude of climate change will consistently exceed this variation,” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he’s saying the variation will exceed the variation…. Or is he saying the change in the variation will exceed the average….? Or is he saying the magnitude in the average variation will exceed the change….? And the change in the natural variation will be novel….? But highly novel…? But not until somewhere between 2100 to 2300…? And only under the worst-case scenario….? That may or – – may not adversely affect migratory bird populations….? Because they definitely can’t reliably predict how birds or other species will respond to novel climates. All this based on 13 years of observations?
And he calls himself a “scientist”???
GOOD LORD, WHERE HAVE WE GONE WRONG?!!?
Why do scientists not expect an evolutionary explosion?
Steve O
As Chamjamal pointed out, anything climate related is a calamity. Even global greening; evidently that can’t last as plant life ‘adapts’ to increased levels of atmospheric CO2 by rejecting it.
See how it works?
Just to give you all a bit of a laugh.
Scotland, one of the most beautiful countries in the world (well I am biased) with spectacular wild scenery and an abundance of wildlife including birds, is being gradually swamped with wind farms. Seriously, cross the border from Scotland to England and the proliferation is clear.
So now the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party – left wing nutters who failed to wrest independence from the rest of the UK, but are still promising to despite no one giving a toss any longer) have embarked on covering the countryside with the things
The City of Edinburgh has decided to introduce a tourist tax (£1 a night per hotel room). Evidently people already paying for their rooms aren’t contributing enough to the local economy and are considered to be damaging the facilities they use. The facilities wouldn’t exist were there not tourists in the first place, but I digress.
Presumably one of the attractions promoted by Edinburgh will be for tourists to gaze across acres of lesser spotted wind turbines whilst they wend their way through the ‘pristine’ Scottish countryside.
I dare-say many visitors will decide not to return to pay the tourist tax, rather, they can stay in their own country and view the wind turbines there.
Make it up? You could not.
“There will be no historic precedent for these new climates”
I guess the Medieval Warm Period is now considered pre-history.
““Climates have natural variation and we’re moving rapidly into territory where the magnitude of climate change will consistently exceed this variation,” says lead author and Cornell Lab researcher Frank La Sorte. “There will be no historic precedent for these new climates, and migratory bird populations will increasingly encounter ‘novel’ climatic conditions. ”
Yeah, like the rampant temperature changes around the Little Dryas period were not radical. How stupid are these people? The biggest disruptor to migrating birds are the act of putting and turbines in the windy channels that birds instinctively use for faster travel during their migrations. You also have to get the north shore Mediterranean people to stop eating migrating song birds for snacks.
“There will be no historic precedent for these new climates, and migratory bird populations will increasingly encounter ‘novel’ climatic conditions.”
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Uhm, yeah, as MarkW said, how did they manage to adapt to the changes from the end of the last glaciation to the (much warmer than now) Holocene climate optimum? What about the quick changing climate into the Younger Dryas and out again? The increasing temps of the Minoan Warming followed by the cooling, the subsequent the Roman Warming and the Dark Ages cooling, the Medieval Warming followed by the Little Ice Age cooling don’t demonstrate that they’re perfectly adaptable to changing climate???
How did our society become so stupid that studies like these don’t get the authors laughed out of town?
If CO2 levels continue to rise birds trying to get off the ground will have to adapt, since a CO2 molecule at 0.0232 nano-meter is greater than an O2 molecule at 0.012 nano-meter.
“we’re moving rapidly into territory where the magnitude of climate change will consistently exceed this variation”
“There will be no historic precedent for these new climates”
“migratory bird populations will increasingly encounter ‘novel’ climatic conditions”
WARNING! WARNING! Bullshit and baseless assumptions detected!
“Cornell Lab scientists generated new climate models incorporating multiple sources of data.”
“The three data sources used for the study were 13 years of observations from the eBird program (2004-2016), climate projections from the most recent International Panel on Climate Change report, and NOAA data used to estimate climatic variation over a 60-year period.”
So, another “garbage in, garbage out” “modelbating” study.
Am I reading this right? Or is it the familiar (baseless) it’s worse than we thought?
“One reason we are considering novel climates is that current ecological projections under climate change tend to be unrealistic,” explains La Sorte. “We can’t reliably predict how birds or other species will respond to novel climates.
Is La Sorte suggesting that model “projections” are “unrealistic”?….surely not, the world has invested > $trillion on worthless wind and solar based on potentially “unrealistic projections”? Impossible, our guardians in government would never let that happen…/sarc
Every one of the species we are being warned will perish from global climate change…soon!…survived over AT LEAST the last 25,000 years when it was a lot warmer than today. And these scientists have to know this.
Funding of these ridiculous studies is all part of the “Academia-Big Government” alliance. Academia siphons off about half the funds (off the top)…and then makes sure the rest of the funds are used to support their socialist agendas. Do what we like, and there’s a lot more $$ available…fail to find what we want and you are out on the street with bad references.
The left always gravitates toward power…(government; academia)…where they are in positions to force the rest of us do what they want…AND MAKE US PAY FOR OUR OWN SUBJUGATION.
That is racketeering.
I have less loathing of the Mafia.
who writes that bollox?
I live on a main artic bird migration route.
In a month or so it turns to a full scale bird one way AUTOBAHN, then reverses in Autumn.
It never ceases to amaze me as I look up and see how those birds in their 100s of 1000s know innately when to go, where to fly, where to stop and then lay eggs 10m away from where their parents did after flying for 1000s of kms.
They know an awful lot more about the weather, the winds and the minute changes in magnetic fields than we will ever know and don’t need either GPS nor super computers to tune their instincts for summer feeding in the 24/24 summer artic sunshine, then return to the right places for winter.
I seem to detect a severe cognitive dissonance between those creature’s small but powerful intelligence of millenia, and so called modern man with his so called large brains turned to arrogance and stupidity in a matter of a mere decade & of a scale rarely witnessed in human history.
The tropics/subtropics to boreal/north temperate migration in spring and reverse in autumn of so many different bird species is one of the most impressive biological phenomena that I am aware of. We have nothing so impressive in Australia – a few tropical species like the Channel-bill Cuckoo descend on Australia in the spring (and impose their shrieking offspring on the local magpies and crows) and a few montane birds move down into the lowlands in the autumn and back up the hills in the spring. I suspect our migrations have been going on for quite a long time – but the Northern Hemisphere migrations? Go back a mere 12,000 years and where exactly would all of those bird species have migrated to? The end of the last glacial epoch opened up a vast area for colonisation and hundreds of different bird species seem to have taken advantage of it quite rapidly. What makes anyone think they can’t handle a longer breeding season – if and when it shows up?