Each map is a visual guide to where a particular bird species may find the climate conditions it needs to survive in the future. We call this the bird’s “climatic range.”
The colors indicate the season in which the bird may find suitable conditions— blue for winter, yellow for summer (breeding), and green for where they overlap (indicating their presence year-round).
The darker the shaded area, the more likely it is the bird species will find suitable climate conditions to survive there.
The outline of the approximate current range for each season remains fixed in each frame, allowing you to compare how the range will expand, contract, or shift in the future.
The first frame of the animation shows where the bird can find a suitable climate today (based on data from 2000). The next three frames predict where this bird’s suitable climate may shift in the future—one frame each for 2020, 2050, and 2080.
You can play or pause the animation with the orange button in the lower left, or select an individual frame to study by clicking on its year.
This species is famous for vomiting a foul, sticky oil at predators when confronted at the nest, which is on a high cliff overlooking either the Atlantic or Pacific ocean in the far north. As a member of the tubenose family, the Northern Fulmar is, when not nesting, almost completely pelagic—that is, it spends almost all of its life at sea—often hundreds of miles from the nearest point of land. Christmas Bird Counters are viewing these birds from the Pacific Coast, which is why Audubon's climate model can project a 67 percent loss of current winter range in these areas. More data may help provide clues as to whether future counters will be able to see them from the coast in the future.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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