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.
A range-restricted habitat specialist, the Florida Scrub-Jay is the sort of species that sets off climate-change alarm bells. Audubon's climate model portends a problematic future for this sought-after Florida endemic, with none of the currently suitable climate space forecast to exist in that condition by century’s end. Some movement northward may be possible, but only if the scrub-jay’s habitat—scrub oak—is available. Such habitat is itself vulnerable to climate change, not to mention development. The model shows a fair bit of suitable climate space opening up in Arizona and southern California, but this sedentary jay is highly unlikely to disperse that far.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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