Bird Migrations in a Warming World

The Guardian has published a report exploring how global warming is affecting the natural migration patterns of different bird species. The article Bird Migration Is Changing is beautifully illustrated with a number of impressive animated maps.

My favorite of these mapped illustrations tracks the path of a storm-chasing seabird, the Desertas petrel. The Desertas petrel spends almost all its life far out at sea, rarely coming to land except to breed on the Desertas Islands near Madeira. Out at sea, storms stir up the ocean surface and bring prey such as squid and fish closer to the top. The Desertas petrel therefore follows these weather systems in order to find richer feeding zones.

This behavior is wonderfully visualized in the article by overlaying the GPS track of the Desertas petrel with a dynamic wind speed layer that uses color to reveal the path and intensity of a passing cyclone over the Atlantic Ocean. The animation vividly captures how the bird appears to “chase” the storm, offering a striking illustration of how intimately these seabirds are connected to the planet’s shifting climate systems. 

The whole article is neatly introduced with an animated world map that visualizes some of the epic migratory journeys undertaken by bird species around the globe. As The Guardian explains, these natural migratory routes exist “thanks to a fragile balance of factors, such as favourable winds and stopover sites rich in food.” They are therefore particularly vulnerable to the disruptions caused by global climate change.

In Birds in a Changing World the Copernicus Earth Observation Programme also used a number of animated interactive maps to show how global warming is affecting the migratory patterns of a number of bird species. 

You can learn more about the migration patterns of bird species on Audubon's impressive Bird Migration Explorer. The Bird Migration Explorer is an interactive map that visualizes the migratory patterns of 458 bird species that breed in the United States and Canada. Using the map you can explore the journeys of individual bird species and discover when different species of birds are likely to migrate through your town or city.