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.
Guillemots are birds of rocky seacoasts. The Pigeon Guillemot is the West Coast representative, ranging south regularly to southern California. In recent geologic time, the species has been prevented by basic biogeography from getting to eastern North America: there has simply been too much land and ice in the way. However, Audubon’s climate model indicates considerable areas of climatic suitability off eastern Canada both at the present time and into the future. With projected troubling contraction of the current range and the ongoing melting of Arctic sea ice, it is possible that the mobile and adaptable Pigeon Guillemot may occupy new regions far to the east of where it occurs today, even as its present summer climate space declines in the west.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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