The good news on a warming planet is that our winters warm, wand that means less birds die in winter. As bird survival in winter should increase slightly by the end of this century, the flip side problem is that many more birds will be killed by extreme heat as summers warm.
Heatwaves linked to climate change have already led to mass deaths of birds and other wildlife around the world. Facing sustained heat on a warming planet, we need to better understand how birds respond when it gets hot. (It's not only birds. We need to stem the loss of biodiversity as the climate warms.)
A new study by 2 CSIRO researchers set out to fill this knowledge gap by examining Australian birds and sadly the findings were pretty awful.
The scientists found birds at the study sites died at a rate three times greater during a very hot summer compared to a mild summer. And the news gets worse. Under a pessimistic emissions scenario, just 11% of birds at the sites would survive. This has profound implications for biodiversity in Australia and underscores the urgent need to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help animals find cool places to shelter.
Hollows in tree bases are the cooler locations for shelter, but the best of these cool hollows are rare, found only in the largest eucalypt mallees – and many of these have been destroyed by climate enabled wildfires.
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