Insects, reptiles, fish and plants migrating north as winter freezes in South become less frequent
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – BERKELEY
Notwithstanding last month’s cold snap in Texas and Louisiana, climate change is leading to warmer winter weather throughout the southern U.S., creating a golden opportunity for many tropical plants and animals to move north, according to a new study appearing this week in the journal Global Change Biology.
Some of these species may be welcomed, such as sea turtles and the Florida manatee, which are expanding their ranges northward along the Atlantic Coast. Others, like the invasive Burmese python — in the Florida Everglades, the largest measured 18 feet, end-to-end –maybe less so.
Equally unwelcome, and among the quickest to spread into warming areas, are the insects, including mosquitoes that carry diseases such as West Nile virus, Zika, dengue and yellow fever, and beetles that destroy native trees.
“Quite a few mosquito species are expanding northward, as well as a lot of forestry pests: bark beetles, the southern mountain pine beetle,” said Caroline Williams, associate professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the paper. “In our study, we were really focusing on that boundary in the U.S. where we get that quick tropical-temperate transition. Changes in winter conditions are one of the major, if not the major, drivers of shifting distributions.”
That transition zone, northward of which freezes occur every winter, has always been a barrier to species that evolved in more stable temperatures, said Williams, who specializes in insect metabolism — in particular, how winter freezes and snow affect the survival of species.
“For the vast majority of organisms, if they freeze, they die,” she said. “Cold snaps like the recent one in Texas might not happen for 30 or 50 or even 100 years, and then you see these widespread mortality events where tropical species that have been creeping northward are suddenly knocked back. But as the return times become longer and longer for these extreme cold events, it enables tropical species to get more and more of a foothold, and even maybe for populations to adapt in situ to allow them to tolerate more cold extremes in the future.”
The study, conducted by a team of 16 scientists led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), focused on the effects warming winters will have on the movement of a broad range of cold-sensitive tropical plants and animals into the Southern U.S., especially into the eight subtropical U.S. mainland states: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Williams and Katie Marshall of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver co-wrote the section on insects for the study.
The team found that a number of tropical species, including insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, grasses, shrubs and trees, are enlarging their ranges to the north. Among them are species native to the U.S., such as mangroves, which are tropical salt-tolerant trees; and snook, a warm water coastal sport fish; and invasive species such as Burmese pythons, Cuban tree frogs, Brazilian pepper trees and buffelgrass.
“We don’t expect it to be a continuous process,” said USGS research ecologist Michael Osland, the study’s lead author. “There’s going to be northward expansion, then contraction with extreme cold events, like the one that just occurred in Texas, and then movement again. But by the end of this century, we are expecting tropicalization to occur.”
The authors document several decades’ worth of changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme cold snaps in San Francisco, Tucson, New Orleans and Tampa – all cities with temperature records stretching back to at least 1948. In each city, they found, mean winter temperatures have risen over time, winter’s coldest temperatures have gotten warmer, and there are fewer days each winter when the mercury falls below freezing.
Temperature records from San Francisco International Airport, for example, show that before 1980, each winter would typically see several sub-freezing days. For the past 20 years, there has been only one day with sub-freezing temperatures.
Changes already underway or anticipated in the home ranges of 22 plant and animal species from California to Florida include:
- Continuing displacement of temperate salt marsh plants by cold-sensitive mangrove forests along the Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts. While this encroachment has been happening over the last 30 years, with sea-level rise, mangroves may also move inland, displacing temperate and freshwater forests.
- Buffelgrass and other annual grasses moving into Southwestern deserts, fueling wildfire in native plant communities that have not evolved in conjunction with frequent fire.
- The likelihood that tropical mosquitos that can transmit encephalitis, West Nile virus and other diseases will further expand their ranges, putting millions of people and wildlife species at risk of these diseases.
- Probable northward movement, with warming winters, of the southern pine beetle, a pest that can damage commercially valuable pine forests in the Southeast.
- Recreational and commercial fisheries’ disruption by changing migration patterns and the northward movement of coastal fishes.
The changes are expected to result in some temperate zone plant and animal communities found today across the southern U.S. being replaced by tropical communities.
“Unfortunately, the general story is that the species that are going to do really well are the more generalist species — their host plants or food sources are quite varied or widely distributed, and they have relatively wide thermal tolerance, so they can tolerate a wide range of conditions,” Williams said. “And, by definition, these tend to be the pest species — that is why they are pests: They are adaptable, widespread and relatively unbothered by changes in conditions, whereas, the more specialized or boutique species are tending to decline as they get displaced from their relatively narrow niche.”
She cautioned that insect populations overall are falling worldwide.
“We are seeing an alarming decrease in total numbers in natural areas, managed areas, national parks, tropical rain forests — globally,” she said. ” So, although we are seeing some widespread pest species increasing, the overall pattern is that insects are declining extremely rapidly.”
The authors suggest in-depth laboratory studies to learn how tropical species can adapt to extreme conditions and modeling to show how lengthening intervals between cold snaps will affect plant and animal communities.
“On a hopeful note, it is not that we are heading for extinction of absolutely everything, but we need to prepare for widespread shifts in the distribution of biodiversity as climate, including winter climate, changes,” Williams said. “The actions that we take over the next 20 years are going to be critical in determining our trajectory. In addition to obvious shifts, like reducing our carbon footprint, we need to protect and restore habitat for insects. Individuals can create habitat in their own backyards for insects by cultivating native plants that support pollinators and other native insects. Those are little things that people can do and that can be important in providing corridors for species to move through our very fragmented habitats.”
###
“For the vast majority of organisms, if they freeze, they die,” she said. “Cold snaps like the recent one in Texas might not happen for 30 or 50 or even 100 years, and then you see these widespread mortality events where tropical species that have been creeping northward are suddenly knocked back.”
These numbers going the wrong way didn’t get the message. May be a rough connection between Texas droughts and cold spells, anyway, wouldn’t bet on next one that long. Also lots of fish out there, more than “expected.”
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/orca-pod-gulf-of-mexico/285-6877c6b9-f2cf-43b9-b80d-8e486aa9ba62?fbclid=IwAR2ZsrNqhjN6JBXwpxewteczpQGU68nJ84HAm02k3horCIACnHNltQ8h0Dg
They need to check on the mangroves, snook, gray snapper, etc.
“The team found that a number of tropical species, including insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, grasses, shrubs and trees, are [were?] enlarging their ranges to the north. Among them are species native to the U.S., such as mangroves, which are tropical salt-tolerant trees..”
Access denied
no problem here. nice orcas 🙂
Access Denied to me in France
in the mean time…in the real world
Citrus growers in Florida are moving further south because of the freezes
More delusional unicorn fantasies based upon researcher’s short attention spans.
All it takes is one freeze event to destroy these alleged invading species.
That is the whole concept of “Semi-tropical” and “Temperate” zones. It’s not the alleged average temperature over a few years, it is the maximum and minimum temperatures, period.
Nor should one ignore the slow natural change of species from the last ice age where ice age minimum temperatures extirpated species over large areas.
No UHI effects there, I’m certain!
”Nor should one ignore the slow natural change of species from the last ice age where ice age minimum temperatures extirpated species over large areas.”
Yes. Yet more hysterical nonsense from the fabulous intrepid researchers. Species just do what species do. If they can return to where they once where they will, if they get zapped by cold they will die. If it warms more they will thrive. Everything including humans will adapt to it as it always has in the past.
Why is it that these people can’t seem past a graph on their screens?
What’s going on these days? They seem to worry about everything that has been around for longer than they are even capable of imagining. This sort on GARBAGE is what gives rise to the Extinction Rebellion morons. ( they are having an ”extinction party” in Melbourne soon – if only they really were….)
WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE!?
Mental midgets and complete morons, generally speaking.
Plus a smattering of panties-in-a-knot human-haters, knickers-in-a-twist Chicken Little’s, wild hair up their butt wolf criers, and all manner flavor, and stripe of doomsday panic mongers.
WTF? As I recall, Monarch Butterflies have always been overwintering in California, or at least as long as anyone has been paying attention. All the screaming and renting of clothing has been about them going extinct due to climate change (actually habitat destruction) – if they are surviving better because of less freezing weather, then you think these loons would be happy.
“Nor should one ignore the slow natural change of species from the last ice age where ice age minimum temperatures extirpated species over large areas.”
Not to mention being under a few miles of solid ice.
The last really cold snap was only ten years ago, and it usually drops below freezing at least once a year. Also, we did not track most of these insects until recently. Like the hole in the ozone layer, which was always there, how does the author know that these insects weren’t already moving north. The natural range of an animal or plant is not static, but changes all the time.
Back in the ’70s my school was shutdown for over two weeks because the temperature never rose above freezing. This was in Central Texas. So, it’s definitely not as infrequent as claimed.
But I thought Biden was all in favor of immigration, legal or not?
“Notwithstanding last month’s cold snap in Texas. . .” I live in Guadalupe County east of San Antonio. I’ve measured the atmosphere here since 4 Feb 1990. The recent “cold snap” temperatures and length are nearly historic for this region. Many conifer trees that ordinarily survive freezing weather have died. So have many palms and plants, some of which are tropical. Outside my window is a row of loquats planted in 1986. They are supposed to survive 12 degrees F. All of ours are covered with dead leaves. Hopefully they will come back from their roots. A newspaper report described blue birds that froze to death in their nesting box.
Back in 1968 (Lackland AFB San Antonio) we had several severe hail storms that destroyed a great deal of vegetation as well as aircraft and motor vehicles. So, it seems, that it’s always something – freezing, flooding, drought, or getting pummeled by baseball sized hail.
BTW love your Engineer’s Notebooks. I just designed and built my son a Theremin based on circuits from several of them.
Oh wow! I just looked at the name and had a serious flashback to my electronics-infused adolescence.
Could that be the Forrest M. Mims III, do you think?
I mean, there must be hundreds of people with that exact same name in Texas alone.
It’s him.
Nothing new under the Sun…or the stars for that matter.
Case in point: A while back there was this guy who came up with an idear for a novelty act.
He would repeat anything anyone said and/or any sound they made, instantly…with seemingly zero delay.
Downright creepy at times he was so good at it.
He decided to call himself The Human Echo, and go on the road and find his fame and fortune.
Had a superhero-type costume made up and everything.
Then disaster struck: He got sued…by some other guy who had staked out that name and idea years earlier.
Well, it was a real catastrophe for the poor schmuck….he had spent all of his meager savings on a fancy costume that had “THE Human Echo” written across it, and now, not only was his idea a also-ran and stale concept, but he was, at best, merely “AN human Echo”.
And that just does not have the same ring to it.
Hey…didja ever hear the one about the hunchbacked low-IQ church bell ringer with social phobia disorder and no arms?
(No shaggy dog story on this one…it was a jen-u-wine tragi-comedy)
This comment is getting a tad long in the tooth, so rather than risk being accused of long-windedness (Hey, didja ever hear…oh,nevermind) I’ll skip ahead to the punchline: “I don’t know his name, but his face rings a bell!”
May I add my thanks for the Archer series of Notebooks from 50+ years ago. I still recall your measurement of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in that era.
This myth of hardiness zones moving north has been going on for decades now. The Hardiness Zone Map for the US has been revised and gullible gardeners have been tricked into buying plants that simply cannot jump a full zone and still survive over winter. Plants and animals are not as easily fooled by overly optimistic announcements of warmer winters as CAGW types!
I’ve been growing orchids for 40 years. Some I have been able to grow outside some need artificial heat. NOTHING has changed in that time.
Well, it is sometimes worth giving a plant a zone boost and see what happens. You’d be surprised how effective insulation a good snow cover can give and planting next to walls can help. A late spring or early fall hard frost, though, or a year with poor snow cover, and you have space for some new experiments.
It’s the return to cold weather after an early spring thaw that kills those less hardy plants. They wake up too soon, then get killed by cool temps that aren’t even as cold as the mid winter.
The above article coming out of UC Berkeley just might have an element of truth, but one needs to put it in context. To wit, consider the following:
Based on scientifically-measured mean average annual temperature gradients between the Earth’s poles and its equator, a 2 degrees Celsius average warming of Earth’s atmosphere and land surfaces would be equivalent to moving about 260 miles south in the northern hemisphere (and about 175 miles north in the southern hemisphere), or about 1000 feet lower in elevation in either hemisphere based on the standard atmospheric dry adiabatic lapse rate).
So, does the climate, types of shelter, farming of crops and animals, difficulty of obtaining water and power, and overall quality of life (for insects as well as humans) change so much over such short distances (~200 miles north/south), or 1000 feet in elevation? I think not . . . and this is among the best possible examples of how a 2 degrees C global temperature swing might actually affect life on Earth.
If anything, such limited global warming will likely have a net-positive global economic impact as it will likely increase the probability of rain globally (thereby crop growth for most of the world) and reduce the total amount of fuel used to keep humans warm over the course of a year in the temperate latitudes.
But maybe UC Berkeley wants to use the “observed” movement of insect populations to argue that climates around the world must have warmed much, much more that 2 degrees C over just the last 50 or so years, à la the alarmist conclusion “we need to prepare for widespread shifts in the distribution of biodiversity as climate, including winter climate, changes”?
Therein lies the fallacy.
It’s another example where temperature averages are abused to make absurd claims.
What matters to Semitropical and Tropical animals/plants moving north is Tmin, not some kludged average.
Yes, USDA fudged the local growing zones increasing the local zone while alleging a local capability to grow plants that need greater warmth. All based upon increasing average temperatures and ‘climate change’…
Then several days hit a few years back where the low temperatures hit the minimums for the old growing zone. The cold killed plants area wide for both commercial and residential growers.
USDA corrected their erroneous zones locally.
Now a decade later and USDA is making the same noises as before about correcting local zone maps to take advantage of higher average temperatures.
It’s the official mindset, not science.
The actuality of hitting 0°F-5°F once every ten to fifteen years has not changed, just the daily average temperature mindset at USDA is fixated on “global warming”.
I attended a wedding in San Antonio in the early 1990s. I heard from one Texan after another about their recent ‘great freeze’ that killed their plants and orchids.
Many Texans attached their orchids directly to their trees. A few years of growth and those plants were firmly attached. Meaning, there is no easy way to bring them inside.
Texans in 2021 faced ‘once in a hundred years’ plant and animal killing temperature lows.
The living organisms that move to more agreeable climate zones are just doing what they have always done throughout history. Some “scientist/researcher” taking the current snapshot in time as the “new normal” needs to investigate that history before making claims.
“The living organisms that move to more agreeable climate zones are just doing what they have always done throughout history.”
Including me.
“…taking the current snapshot in time as the “new normal”…”
That’s what youngsters do, when deprived of guidance, because they were told about a “generation gap”, and taught to disregard the wisdom of elders as , what was that again? “the ignorance of uneducated boomers”? But that’s what you get when you let the television raise your children, goodness know how the wipe-screen generation will end up.
When I read:
“Temperature records from San Francisco International Airport, for example, show that before 1980, each winter would typically see several sub-freezing days…”
it was clear to me that the alleged scientists had no respect for quality of data. Airports are reported to be reflect the greatest impact of increasing population, economic activity and travel by recording increased temperatures.
I am also amused by the assumption (intuitive but factually wrong) that mosquitos need to live in warm climates. Travel to northern Sweden and see the local ‘regional bird is their monster mosquito. Building St Petersburg (the one in Russia) lost most workers through malaria until they drained the swamps to stop mosquito breeding.
Still, the story is what most uncritical people expect to be true so it is written, published and believed (and receives research grants.)
The worst malaria outbreak was in Siberia.
Most of those folks utterly disbelieve the extent of efforts made to destroy mosquito populations across the USA.
I remember men traipsing through every area of our county searching out everywhere that held water. Even small pockets of water that they would then dose with mosquito killing insecticides or oils. Oil was a favorite mosquito control for still waters.
These mosquito control efforts are what finally tamed America’s yellow fever and malaria outbreaks.
On a side note while investigating genealogy for some Mississippi ancestors I was puzzled by their relatively close death dates for many family members.
A few of the adults were recorded as “yellow fever” victim in their death notices. Ancestors whose deaths a result of one of America’s yellow fever outbreaks.
I, too, was amazed to learn that west nile mosquitos are limited to tropic zones.
I’ve never seen so many mosquitoes as I saw in southwest Alaska.
I liked this example of deep knowledge of mosquito-borne disease:
“The likelihood that tropical mosquitos that can transmit encephalitis, West Nile virus …”
West Nile and the encephalitis diseases of most interest to North Americans are transmitted by mosquito species endemic to current climatic zones in North America. That is why West Nile spread all across the continent including into southern Canada. That is why you get period panic porn about Eastern Equine Encephalitis or Western Equine Encephalitis outbreaks in the news.
lockdowns for mosquitoes??
Seems reasonable to me. If you don’t go out and never open your door or window, how are you going to get bitten by a disease carrying mosquito.
I would like to see the actual temperature records that are the basis for these projections. Anyone who highlights the temperature records at an airport has a questionable understanding of the temperature records. Farm country in California should have plenty of long series temperature records that detail the number of frost days.
Yes the fact their using temperature records from city’s rather then open country should ring alarm bells.l myself believe that its far more likely that its warming during the springtime what’s causing any movement to the north. As its spring frosts that tend to cause the most damage plants and the insects that feed off them.
The data from nearby Davis exp farm weather station, about 70 miles away and in a relatively rural (farm country) setting, actually supports the premise that freezing temperatures have declined significantly, though the bulk of the decline happened prior to the 1950s, when growth in CO2 became significant. In the record since 1908 there are only two days in Davis that the daily high temperature was 32 F or lower, one day in 1972 and one in 1961, so that doesn’t show much evidence of reduced freezing days. But the following graph shows that the number of days with minimum temperatures at freezing or below over the ten year periods from 1908-1917 up through 2008-2017 does clearly show fewer freezing nights.
Hand up, those who actually LIKE days below freezing !
Hand up, those that prefer it somewhat warmer.
Davis, California, or is this Davis, Texas?
If this is about Davis, CA, that city has expanded greatly into surrounding farm lands since 1950 and I would expect the UHI effect to be quite large compared with 70 years ago.
Add in the effects of irrigation as well.
But looking at one or a few locations and assuming it to be representative of anything but that location is just ridiculous.
The article focusing on an airport that went from a farm to one of the busiest and largest paved areas in the world is frickin stupid.
The kind of thing someone who wants to tel tall tales would say, the kind of example they would use, etc.
From my back door, I can see three distinct rain zones. For my own rain, I have to walk around to the front door to see if it’s coming. Driving to town, seven kilometers (4mi.) I am often surprised by the temperature gradient. Forty kilos north, one enters proper subtropical country, hundred kilos west, the same, and twenty south it gets real frosty compared to here. To the east, it’s four hundred kilos to the ski resorts, and fifty after that, full on tropical coastal plains. Five hundred west is some of the driest desert on earth. Last summer, a small hurricane originated in my bottom garden (kid you not) and proceeded to uproot huge trees, lamp posts, killed some people living in a ramshackle economic refugee camp twenty kilos east as the crow flies before ripping roofs off of houses for another fifty kilos east. In general you don’t find wind mills in my area, not enough wind… surrounded by hills and mountains, a huge crater, really, 40km+ radius.
Ya’ll can take your “averages” and shove it where the sun ain’t never ashinin’.
To be clear, they based their assessment of warming winter temperatures by examining in major cites where expanding heat island are well docmumented, yet bear little resemblance to the temperature trends in surrounding rural areas. Second, Species ranges are not static. Species can adapt and expand on their own whether climate is changing or not. It is arrogant humans who, although knowing better, keep imposing static world assessments on the biological world.
“On a hopeful note, it is not that we are heading for extinction of absolutely everything…” LOL. By the way, here in upstate NY we could use some human climate refugees from Pennsylvania to help with two things: Restore the weakened tax base, and build popular support to eventually resume natural gas drilling and fracking.
If you lived in Pennsylvania, why would you even consider a move to northern New York State?
Besides noting that climate emigrants from New York are heading to the warmest states in the Union.
Of course it sounds absurd. I was applying the lunacy of the tropics-will-move-north claims. 🙂
Until very recently wasn’t the US South East one of the areas of the planet on a cooling trend? Seems like the cooling trend reversed in the past few years and a few species expanded north by a few miles. That cooling trend could easily return and expand in this decade.
So mosquito moults in old pond bottom corings should make a good temperature proxy then. Can’t wait for that to be worse than we thought.
Knew they were a bunch of lying cretins when they said Monarchs are starting to overwinter in California! I first saw the Monarchs at Natural Bridges about 25 years ago and NOTHING at the interpretive center, or that I have ever read since, said anything about it being a recent development! My grandmother told me of seeing them in Pacific Grove when she was a girl; which would have been around the 1890s!
The Mexican site suffered from a major freeze that killed a horrendous number of butterflies; but anyone who thinks that higher CO2 causes unusual cold should really seek professional help! Your brain is not functioning correctly!
The Mexican Monarch populations are affected by loss of habitat and plants suitable for their food and reproductive needs. They are still recovering and would benefit from anyone planting butterfly friendly species. That’s what a REAL environmentalist would do!
Yes, B.S. Monarchs have been wintering in my part of CA for all of the 55 years I’ve lived here and I’m certain for many many years before. I believe there are distinct populations of Monarchs with different migration characteristics, but apparently these lamebrains don’t know much.
Thanks – that is what I thought and my memory too (although it doesn’t go back as long as your grandma’s). This article is full of BS.
Simple explanation for growing California wintering population: Less competition for summer food supplies from the Mexico wintering population. Nothing to do with California climate.
Suggested scientific experiment: Use genetic analysis to determine if mosquitos are really relocating from Mexico (in winter) to California, as the article suggests, or whether the California population is genetically distinct and is growing due to reduced competition for summer food supplies.
Just for the record, I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, in the mid-late 50s. That’s right I am an ‘old Sourdough’ at 76. My parents and I drove up the Alcan Hwy twice, back when it was gravel. And I can tell you, without a doubt, that if you think mosquitoes are endemic of warmer clime, you are sadly mistaken. There are far more of them near and above the Arctic Circle. And they are really, truely, honestly, “out for Blood!”
As a boy scout, my troop camped for a week, at Mt. Mckinley state Park, and the mosquitoes were so bad that when I returned to Ft. Richardson, I had to enter the hospital, due to the hundreds of bites I experienced. I am now allergic to mosquito bites as a result.
The next time you watch a nature program about Alaska, and they show all the caribou grazing AND twitching their hides back and forth, they are doing that in order to make the mosquitos go away.
Or the black flies.
Then there are the horse flies. They put a few thousand gallons of fuel in before they realized id was not a plane.
Isn’t mosquito a state bird of Alaska?
Five boys in my family. Three of whom mosquitos generally dislike, two of whom mosquitos love.
Even when fishing in one of the island parks along Barnegat Bay off New Jersey, few mosquitos bother me.
On a competitive dare, we once slept a hot night with screens out, windows open and without sheets.
I had around ten mosquito bites entire. One of the Brothers loved by mosquitos had over thirty bites on one leg. He didn’t have to count any further as he’d already won (lost?) the dare.
I used to keep a boat in Delacroix about fifteen mile SE of New Orleans. The mosquitos there were so thick and voracious that I ran everywhere trying to minimize mosquito contact. Running meant firmly clamping one’s mouth shut unless one wanted a mouthful of mosquitos.
Once underway on the boat mosquitos were not a problem. I did note that local raccoons always looked starved. I doubt it was from any lack of food. I do suspect the mosquitos kept local fauna weight to the low side.
Watching hunters, fisherpersons, geologists and researchers up in Northern Canada, Alaska or Siberia is always astonishing.
Perhaps a tad smaller than the mosquitos in Louisiana but much more voracious. Even the folks wearing netting keep trying to kill mosquitos.
Older experienced veterans of north country are the ones that tend to ignore mosquitos.
This is good news. Maybe eventually it will be warm enough to grow oranges in North Florida like they did a century ago.
I can remember when heavy freezes were knocking the citrus belt south in Florida and my relatives lost some beautiful old grapefruit trees. That was over 30 years ago. It is the extremes that set limits for plants and animals, not the averages.
Ahh so what?
“Changes in winter conditions are one of the major, if not the major, drivers of shifting distributions.”
That transition zone, northward of which freezes occur every winter, has always been a barrier to species that evolved in more stable temperatures, said Williams, who specializes in insect metabolism — in particular, how winter freezes and snow affect the survival of species.
“For the vast majority of organisms, if they freeze, they die,” she said.”
It’s nice to see a bit of honesty, even if it is accidental. It generally isn’t the hot that is bad for life on planet earth, it is the cold.
It is honest, but not completely competent. Old ecological principle, ‘Law of the Minimum’ (Liebig, 1840), expanded by Shelford’s ‘Law of Tolerance’ (1913). Not averages, but extremes are limiting.
This is something one would expect a group of biologists studying response to climate change to know. How could they not know?
Unfortunately for the authors the lower 48 just had the coldest February in 30 years. It’s the first day of Spring and when I woke up this morning the puddle in the front yard of my central Indiana home, left over from the drenching rains we had earlier this week, had ice on it. Thursday night-Friday morning I idled the truck down at Smithville, TN because it was in the mid-40s.
So I don’t foresee any wild parrots showing up here and don’t expect to be planting palm trees or have to worry about Iguanas.
By coincidence, many human pest species of the genus Greenis Chickenlittleis Non compos Mentis also seem to have increased significantly.
How much range extension is possible with just a few tenths of a degree of warming cause?
Beyond that, like the rest of the alarmists, they are assuming that at least 100% of the warming that has occurred is due to CO2. No other possibilities are to be considered.
From the article: “The study, conducted by a team of 16 scientists led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), focused on the effects warming winters will have on the movement of a broad range of cold-sensitive tropical plants and animals into the Southern U.S.”
“We don’t expect it to be a continuous process,” said USGS research ecologist Michael Osland, the study’s lead author. “There’s going to be northward expansion, then contraction with extreme cold events, like the one that just occurred in Texas, and then movement again. But by the end of this century, we are expecting tropicalization to occur.”
end excerpts
So this is not happening now, this is what they are expecting to happen because they are expecting the temperatures to climb in the future.
Someone should tell them there is a possibilty that the climate may cool, not warm.
These scientists are speculating about a future that may not come to pass.
LOL! They can’t forecast the weather two weeks out and they want us to believe they can forecast climate! Just like so much the lefts says and does, it would take an imaginative fiction writer to come up with it!
Predicting The Climate In 100 Years | Real Climate Science
” … we are expecting tropicalization to occur.”
If Kansas becomes tropical I expect I will love it. No more snow and ice, balmy winds, and great evenings! LOL
How about a reality check for Those People? If they will take the time to voice what they are really afraid of (change, and no control over it), they will be a lot better off.
As shown in the geological record, including the iron concretion with a shrimp embedded in it from the Carboniferous epoch, change happens all the time and is part of the natural process of things on this planet. Likely, it happens on other planets like ours as well.
If certain members of an ephemeral species like H. Sapiens can’t handle being unable to control changes, then they have a real problem. That phobia of theirs is the real problem, not extreme weather conditions that happen once or twice in a century.
I said a while back that the thing I remember most about Odessa, TX, (I was 4 years old) was that the winter was nasty, cold and had frequent dust storms. Big deal. It’s Texas. Same thing in the far north: sometimes, it gets warm enough to melt the tundra’s ice pockets. Big deal. It’s how Nature works and ain’t nothin’ they can do about it. Species have come and gone on this planet for millions – nay, BILLIONS – of years, and it will continue long after Hoomans have gone the way of all things.
That phobia they have is the real problem.
Whatever happened to insectageddon?
They claim it as a fact in the article. They make many claims as if they are facts but provide no evidence other than handwaving. No one pays any attention to insects, not enough to know if populations are changing or not, so it is easy to lie about it.
Either the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – BERKELEY is inhabited by space aliens — or — there’s an outside chance this happens every 110,000 years during the ice age cycles. More likely both are true.
At least for one of the biggest invasive pests, the tiger mosquito there are other reasons for the introduction and distribution:
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/3/3/97-0309_article
This species, which readily colonizes container habitats in the peridomestic environment, was probably introduced into the continental United States in shipments of scrap tires from northern Asia. The early pattern of dispersal followed the interstate highway system, which suggests further dispersal by human activities
I can’t read it to see how they deal with the obvious – the range is limited by the occasional extremes of cold. How many polar vortexes have we had? A degree warmer, on average, doesn’t make a difference.
A neighbour, a few years ago, lost his new avocado farm because of frost, well outside the tropics.
Odd. Looked for the new paper at Global Change Biology. Neither in any recent published issue nor in their list of accepted, available but not yet in an citable issue. Was curious about any data and methods rather than just a rank speculation.
I tore apart a longish paper with similar conclusions based on about 615 insects and their highest reported latitudes over the past 50 years. Turns out the paper was just junk. Mostly Invasive insects in new regions with similar ecosystems only higher latitudes, for example the emerald ash borer from China. Funniest part was the most extreme ‘northing’ examples in the paper were all related to indoor ornamental plants or greenhouse vegetable gardens, NOTHING to do with climate at all. Essay Greehouse Effects in ebook Blowing Smoke
“Tropical species are moving northward in U.S. as winters warm”but wind is getting stronger:
White House blames the WIND for knocking over US President Joe Biden THREE times as he walked up the stairs of Air Force One
https://nypost.com/2021/03/19/white-house-blames-wind-for-bidens-air-force-one-steps-fall/
68 kg, I say a lightweight President ?
DJT 110 kg, now that was a man size heavy duty President.
What BS, his feeds hasn’t exposed to wind 😀
And it was wind, not storm 😀
You know I believe it! A slight breeze would knock that shell of a man down.
OMG, it’s also happening with Homo sapiens. We’re doomed!
It’s the regional version of the doomsday clock–always spinning.
Biden Admin to Start Flying Illegals from Southern Border to Red States Near Canadian Border on Taxpayer Dime
http://www.domigood.com/2021/03/biden-admin-to-start-flying-illegals.html?m=1
As long as those northern states push them across the border to Canada so Treaudo can take care of them. I mean we can’t keep the illegals in Mexico or more southern stable countries because only the US is a fair enough leftist country to protect them. But why stop here when Canada is such a BETTER place for them to end up, the US is just in the way.
When are these Red state governors going to grow a pair?
It sounds like it is about time to put about 25,000 National Guard troops down on the southern border. They can start by relocating the National Guard that are lazing around Washington DC down to the border where they are actually needed.
On red states dime, not on the feds.That way the dems win double, the immigrants see how poorly they are treated (state money stretched) and hear dems promising help, so they will get even more votes. Their purpose is obvious.
They ought to send the illegal aliens to Nancy Pelosi’s house and Chuck Shumer’s house, and any overflow goes to Washington DC.
I hear there are so many illegal aliens that the Biden administration is going to start releasing them into the U.S. without giving them a court date to appear for an asylum hearing.
In other words, the Biden administration is throwing the doors to the United States wide open to the world, and damn the consequences.
A few years ago the Audubon Society did a “study” which showed that more than half the birds will lose their habitat due to climate change and move northward. They did not check the habitat to the north or food supply, but used only the temperatures based on the erroneous assumptions of IPCC.
They used a faulty projection to make another faulty projection. They defend their “science”.
“Others, like the invasive Burmese python — in the Florida Everglades, the largest measured 18 feet, end-to-end –maybe less so.”
WHOA!! Burmese pythons have extended their range into Florida? How did that happen?
And the author thought it necessary to explain that 18 feet was the length, not the girth?
I couldn’t stomach reading past that point.
She seems to have no ability to discern why an introduced species will almost certainly be increasing it’s population when it winds up in a new area that it can thrive in.
Or with climate induced widening of a species’ range as opposed to an introduced species expanding the new area it is inhabiting until it reaches places where there are conditions that limit it’s ability to expand further.
Introduced species can expand for a very long time in certain cases, both because there is a large area with the proper conditions and resources for that species, but also because it may only be able to spread at some particular rate…a few tens of miles a year or whatever.
I wonder if she is aware of the history of the range of armadilloes in the US over the past hundred years?
That one case history alone is pretty much enough to put a big permanent hole in the fauiled hypothesis of “CO2 as thermostat of the planet” jackassery.
I bet there were no pythons thriving in the Texas cold. If Texas has this problem, the arctic cold front probably eliminated it.
How long have we to wait for predictions, polar bears will move northward ?? /s
If anyone is really worried about the polar bears, they can always take a few breeding pairs to Antarctica.
The penguins there are 100% defenseless on land…there will be scads of polar bears in no time.
<blockquote>”Temperature records from San Francisco International Airport, for example, show that before 1980, each winter would typically see several sub-freezing days. For the past 20 years, there has been only one day with sub-freezing temperatures.”</blockquote>
I’ve lived just a few miles from the San Antonio airport for more than a decade. We’ve had several sub freezing days every year I’ve been here. All the SA airport data has done is prove that UHI effect is far greater than the climate ‘scientists’ are willing to admit.
A total load of manure. The entire “study” as summarized here appears to be model-based projections of what “will” happen. Nowhere does it show or emphasize that they are collecting field data on any or all of the species mentioned. They keep saying “will” occur, not saying field data shows that something measurable IS occurring. According to even worst case climate change projections using totally implausible scenarios and models that run hot, the change over the next 80-100 years will be the equivalent of a person moving from northern Iowa to southern Iowa. Ooh! Scary.
Yuppers…you nailed it.
There has been no measured warming in the US.
The only cause of any trend upwards, rahter than cyclical fluctations, has been got by altering what was actually measured.
And that right there is a fact.
Mann-made global warming…every Nanojoule, Terawatt, Manhatten, and Hiroshima of it
Alaskans must be so happy not to have mosquitos.
Haha!
Oh, snap!
Exactly, it’s so cold here, in northern canada there are no mosquitos in summer.
Except of course, the ones that pick up and carry away entire caribou
The recent Texas freeze was colder than most, but everyplace in Texas has freezes one time or another. The really unusual thing about this last one was it’s wide extent.
We live on the water near Galveston. Our little town has no room to grow so there’s no change due to heat island effects. We can grow bananas and they survive many winters, but every few years they get frozen out. This was just another one of those years.
“But by the end of this century, we are expecting tropicalization to occur.” said USGS research ecologist Michael Osland.
Good grief, and they say listen to the “scientist’s”.
Exactly.
“Nothing has changed except some fluctations, but we are expecting that long after we are dead, things will be different.”
I remain in awe of the U.S. being so wealthy as to pay salaries and retirement benefits to people for writing such drivel.
I don’t understand why posters here are arguing with the evidence… in the UK, with its records stretching back in detail well over 100 years, there’s clear evidence of species extending/moving their range northwards at a rate not seen in the past.
New species are also moving into the UK. (The Great White Egret, Little Egret and Cattle Egret are all now resident species in the UK and indeed in my part of it, where there were none before the mid 1990s)
Those are not cases of climate caused enlargement of range…those are introduced species, my charmingly dull-witted friend.
Griff, if these species are spreading into Britain it’s because it’s part of their natural range
As it’s been much warmer in the last 10,000 years than it is today these species must have lived there in the past and are now only reestablishing their presence.
Why can’t you celebrate a return to the natural order? To species increasing their ranges
What is wrong with you?
“Griff, if these species are spreading into Britain it’s because it’s part of their natural range”
Why just now ? For centuries, Britain was not “part of their natural range”, but something changed. What ? More frogs around ? Never say “climate”.
Very apt that the first word was “notwithstanding”.
Unfortunately, nearly every word of the rest of the text of her essay is flat out wrong, or a pack of lies, dreeadfully mistaken, or otherwise completely untrue, not so, and to the contrary.
This is very simply because, a species moving into a place where there are extremes of temperature or moisture that the species is unable to survive in, will be eliminated from that location.
This is exactly the sort of event that delineates the boundaries of a given species’ range.
Plants and animals and the microrganisms that make up our biosphere are constantly seeking to reproduce and to expand into new areas.
It is this tendancy that allows us all to survive to begin with, when circumstances change…which they always do.
And various forces and factors are generally pushing back against this tendancy to reproduce and spread.
Competitition for resources, and the ability to adapt successfully to the full range of conditions that prevail in a given location, are among the most powerful of these countervailing forces.
Those species that we call “native” to a given location, are those ones which are fully able to survive the full range of variability in the availability of various resources, as well as every variation in the prevailing climatic and weather conditions of that place and at that time.
Pine trees could not survive near Hudson Bay 18,000 years ago. Now they can.
Every habitat consists of many seperate independant or co-dependant or mutually exclusive ecological niches, and each of these niches will tend to fill with some or another biome, or mixture of species, which is suited to survival in that particular habitat and group of niches.
It is amazing that someone who claims to be some sort of biologist would paint a picture that casts the ability of life to survive and thrive as a bad thing.
I wonder if she has spent any time pondering how many species, entire biomes, habitats, and trillions upon trillions of individual living organisms, were wiped out when the current ice age began?
Or how it is that there are now a diversity of species across entire continent sized areas that were miles deep in ice a mere 12,000 years ago?
We are all assigned a death sentence at birth, as are many species (But not all. Consider a bacteria which endlessly reproduces by splitting into two daughter cells. Do any of those that have successfully reproduced ever really die?) and many entire lineages.
Unless we can forestall the next reglaciation event, everything will die across vast regions of the Earth, and those areas will be nearly sterile and barren wastelands for many tens of thousands of years.
It is sickening to listen to jackasses like this person bemoan the good times on planet Water, on Planet Warmth, on planet Life…on planet Earth.
She is not even very good at what she claims as her specialty. Either that is she is a deliberate disembler and/or a liar.
Zika is not spreading throughout the US. Neither is Dengue. Dengue is one of the diseases that various alarmist types have warned is heading for the US for decades. It has never taken foothold here, let alone spread. Having a suitable insect vector is only one small part of the many co-dependant factors that must exist for a insect vector-borne disease-causing organism to thrive and spread.
We have no malaria here in the US, although we did have it back in the Little Ice Age. And people come back to the US infected with the pathogen all the frickin time!
We have no Yellow Fever here, not since a US Army doctor, Major Walter Reed, overturned several of the prevailing paradigms of dieases and disease transmission, and in so doing ended the disease here in the US, along with several others, and allowed other countries and people to follow suit. Having the proper conditions for a mosquito to survive will not cause an infectious organism to be presnt or allow it to spread, not necessarily and certainly not as a consequence of merely being present. If that was true we would never have gotten rid of any diseases, and nor would other countries, many of them 100% tropical, have done so or be currently continuing to do so, all the time.
People in the US protect themselves from mosquitoes by several means and methods, only some of which have any chance of ever ridding a region of them entirely.
Our sanitary, hygienic, cultural, nutritional, and lifestyle choices and conditions prevent many diseases from being much of a threat to us here, even when such diseases find their way to our shores. The simple truth is, many disease simply fizzle here…like Dengue, like Zika, and like many others.
As well as being spectacularly uninformative re infectious disease causing organisms and their vectors, she apparently has a poor or absent grasp of ecology, as well as the causes and factors involved in changing forestry ecology in the US.
Can I ask a silly question?
If the range of these species is moving north, can I ask how far? I mean, gosh, I might have missed something when I read the article, correct me if I did, but when I read things like this I like to look for numbers.
So how far north? An inch? A foot? Ten feet? A mile? A whole lot of miles?
And as for San Francisco getting warming, doesn’t that have more to do with concrete than climate change? How are the frosts doing across the bay and over the hills where there is (somewhat) less concrete?
I was taught that migration and evolution were natural. Along with climate change..
Different animals are expanding their ranges, likely still nowhere near as much as 1000years ago but still, good news
I grew up in south Saskatchewan in the 70’s, I had a paper route for a lot of years and I can assure everyone the polar vortex was the norm.
Temps in the -30s and incredible amounts of snow, my mom has her picture albums full of 10’ snow drifts, every year we could tunnel in standing up and make large open rooms. All of which ended the winter if 81-82.
Anyone who thinks it is imperative we somehow try to force the climate back to the awful 70s should be dragged by their heels through town and displayed as idiots for all to see
“….Tropical species are moving northward in U.S. as winters warm…” and possibly northern species are taking over larger areas of the continent as their general breeding conditions improve. Click-bait journalism loves stories that can be spun one way this week and the other next week.
Been waiting for these critters to invade Canada since the 70s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee
Oh, and is there were we compare the malaria rates in Texas and Mexican border towns again?