scholarly journals Late Summer and Fall Nesting in the Acorn Woodpecker and Other North American Terrestrial Birds

The Condor ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 109 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-350
Author(s):  
Walter D. Koenig ◽  
Justyn T. Stahl
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
North American ◽  
Breeding Success ◽  
Population Studies ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Substantial Fraction ◽  
Melanerpes Formicivorus ◽  
Summer Temperatures ◽  
Total Productivity ◽  
Acorn Woodpeckers

Abstract Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) at Hastings Reservation in central coastal California exhibit a bimodal peak in annual breeding activity. One peak occurs in spring during which the majority of breeding takes place, while a second is centered in late August as the new acorn crop matures. These latter nests are mostly initiated in late summer but often do not fledge until at least late September and are thus referred to here as ‘fall’ nests. Fall nests occur in about one-third of all years, taking place when the acorn crop is large and summer temperatures are relatively high. Fledglings from fall nests constitute 4.3% of the population's total productivity and survive and recruit to the population at levels comparable to spring fledglings. Fall nesting is less likely in groups in which either the male or female breeding adults have undergone a change from the prior year, but groups are otherwise indistinguishable. Ecologically, fall nesting is closely tied to the acorn crop and thus to breeding success in the following, rather than the prior, spring. Among North American terrestrial birds in general, fall breeding has been reported in 16% of all species and is significantly more common among residents and colonially nesting species, in which the frequency exceeds 25%. Furthermore, fall nesting is likely to have been underreported in the literature. Thus, this phenomenon is at least an irregular part of the breeding biology of a substantial fraction of North American birds and should be considered a possibility in population studies of temperate-zone species. This is especially true given that fall nesting is likely to increase as global warming takes place.

scholarly journals A Link between the Hiatus in Global Warming and North American Drought

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 3834-3845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas L. Delworth ◽  
Fanrong Zeng ◽  
Anthony Rosati ◽  
Gabriel A. Vecchi ◽  
Andrew T. Wittenberg
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
North America ◽  
Surface Temperature ◽  
North American ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Tropical Pacific ◽  
Global Warming Hiatus ◽  
Warming Hiatus ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Tropical Pacific

Abstract Portions of western North America have experienced prolonged drought over the last decade. This drought has occurred at the same time as the global warming hiatus—a decadal period with little increase in global mean surface temperature. Climate models and observational analyses are used to clarify the dual role of recent tropical Pacific changes in driving both the global warming hiatus and North American drought. When observed tropical Pacific wind stress anomalies are inserted into coupled models, the simulations produce persistent negative sea surface temperature anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific, a hiatus in global warming, and drought over North America driven by SST-induced atmospheric circulation anomalies. In the simulations herein the tropical wind anomalies account for 92% of the simulated North American drought during the recent decade, with 8% from anthropogenic radiative forcing changes. This suggests that anthropogenic radiative forcing is not the dominant driver of the current drought, unless the wind changes themselves are driven by anthropogenic radiative forcing. The anomalous tropical winds could also originate from coupled interactions in the tropical Pacific or from forcing outside the tropical Pacific. The model experiments suggest that if the tropical winds were to return to climatological conditions, then the recent tendency toward North American drought would diminish. Alternatively, if the anomalous tropical winds were to persist, then the impact on North American drought would continue; however, the impact of the enhanced Pacific easterlies on global temperature diminishes after a decade or two due to a surface reemergence of warmer water that was initially subducted into the ocean interior.

Evaluation of management in North American zoos to enhance breeding success of the fishing cat ( Prionailurus viverrinus ) ex situ population

Zoo Biology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-199
Author(s):  
Jilian M. Fazio ◽  
Elizabeth W. Freeman ◽  
Erika Bauer ◽  
Larry Rockwood ◽  
Edward C. M. Parsons
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Breeding Success ◽  
Ex Situ

scholarly journals Lengthening of summer season over the Northern Hemisphere under 1.5°C and 2.0°C global warming

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo-Joung Park ◽  
Seung-Ki Min ◽  
Evan Weller
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Northern Hemisphere ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Model ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Industrial Condition ◽  
Summer Season ◽  
Hot Days

Abstract Summer season has lengthened substantially across Northern Hemisphere (NH) land over the past decades, which has been attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases. This study examines additional future changes in summer season onset and withdrawal under 1.5℃ and 2.0℃ global warming conditions using multiple atmospheric global climate model (AGCM) large-ensemble simulations from the Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) project. Five AGCMs provide more than 100 runs of 10-year length for three experiments: All-Hist (current decade: 2006-2015), Plus15, and Plus20 (1.5℃ and 2.0℃ above pre-industrial condition, respectively). Results show that with 1.5℃ and 2.0℃ warmer conditions summer season will become longer by a few days to weeks over entire NH lands, with slightly larger contributions by delay in withdrawal due to stronger warming in late summer. Stronger changes are observed more in middle latitudes than high latitudes and largest expansion (up to three weeks) is found over East Asia and the Mediterranean. Associated changes in summer-like day frequency is further analyzed focusing on the extended summer edges. The hot days occur more frequently in lower latitudes including East Asia, USA and Mediterranean, in accord with largest summer season lengthening. Further, difference between Plus15 and Plus20 indicates that summer season lengthening and associated increases in hot days can be reduced significantly if warming is limited to 1.5℃. Overall, similar results are obtained from CMIP5 coupled GCM simulations (based on RCP8.5 scenario experiments), suggesting a weak influence of air-sea coupling on summer season timing changes.

Interannual Variability of Tropical Atlantic-to-Pacific Moisture Transport Linked to ENSO, Atlantic Niño, and Freshwater Budget in the Northwestern Tropical Atlantic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-61
Author(s):  
Jun-Chao Yang ◽  
Yu Zhang ◽  
Ingo Richter ◽  
Xiaopei Lin
Keyword(s):  
Interannual Variability ◽  
Central America ◽  
North American ◽  
El Niño ◽  
Moisture Transport ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Tropical Atlantic ◽  
Freshwater Budget ◽  
Sst Gradient

AbstractMoisture transport from the Atlantic to Pacific is important for basin-scale freshwater budget and the formation of meridional ocean circulation. Although the climatological tropical Atlantic-to-Pacific moisture transport (TAPMORT) has been well investigated, few studies have focused on its variability. Here we investigate the interannual variability of TAPMORT based on the atmospheric reanalysis data sets. The TAPMORT interannual variability is dominated by the variations of trans-basin winds across Central America, and peaks in late boreal summer and late boreal winter. 1) In late summer, a developing El Niño and a mature Atlantic Niña set up an interbasin sea-surface temperature (SST) gradient that strengthens the low-level jet across Central America and therefore TAPMORT (with weakened TAPMORT for opposite signed events). This process typically occurs from July to September, with a peak in August. 2) In late winter, the strengthened southern North American center of the Pacific-North American-like pattern intensifies the TAPMORT variations. Although atmospheric interannual variability dominates these variations, extreme El Niño events are also important for the teleconnections. This process shows a single peak in February, in contrast to the persistent peak in late summer. We further demonstrate that the persistent TAPMORT variability in late summer dominates the moisture divergence over the northwestern tropical Atlantic and modulates freshwater flux there. Thus, our study improves the understanding of how TAPMORT interannual variability and the related interbasin SST gradient regulate the northwestern tropical Atlantic freshwater budget and the related salinity variability.

Public policy towards catastrophe

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Indian Ocean Tsunami ◽  
Cumulative Probability ◽  
Catastrophic Risk ◽  
Death Toll ◽  
Emotional Suffering ◽  
Unknown Probability ◽  
Annual Probability

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 focused attention on a type of disaster to which policymakers pay too little attention – a disaster that has a very low or unknown probability of occurring, but that if it does occur creates enormous losses. The flooding of New Orleans in the late summer of 2005 was a comparable event, although the probability of the event was known to be high; the Corps of Engineers estimated its annual probability as 0.33% (Schleifstein and McQuaid, 2002), which implies a cumulative probability of almost 10% over a thirty-year span. The particular significance of the New Orleans flood for catastrophic-risk analysis lies in showing that an event can inflict enormous loss even if the death toll is small – approximately 1/250 of the death toll from the tsunami. Great as that toll was, together with the physical and emotional suffering of survivors, and property damage, even greater losses could be inflicted by other disasters of low (but not negligible) or unknown probability. The asteroid that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a hydrogen bomb might have killed millions of people had it exploded above a major city. Yet that asteroid was only about 200 feet in diameter, and a much larger one (among the thousands of dangerously large asteroids in orbits that intersect the earth’s orbit) could strike the earth and cause the total extinction of the human race through a combination of shock waves, fire, tsunamis, and blockage of sunlight, wherever it struck. Another catastrophic risk is that of abrupt global warming, discussed later in this chapter. Oddly, with the exception of global warming (and hence the New Orleans flood, to which global warming may have contributed, along with manmade destruction of wetlands and barrier islands that formerly provided some protection for New Orleans against hurricane winds), none of the catastrophes mentioned above, including the tsunami, is generally considered an ‘environmental’ catastrophe. This is odd, since, for example, abrupt catastrophic global change would be a likely consequence of a major asteroid strike.

scholarly journals The Relationships among Actual Weather Events, Perceived Unusual Weather, Media Use, and Global Warming Belief Certainty in China

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Wang ◽  
Lin Lin
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Reverse Causality ◽  
Weather Event ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Summer Temperatures

Abstract Previous research revealed that if individuals personally experience an unusual weather event as a result of global warming (vs no personal experience), they may hold higher belief certainty that global warming is happening and hence develop more favorable attitudes toward mitigation actions. However, much of the previous research focused on self-reported personal experience and global warming beliefs using cross-sectional surveys; reverse causality is thus possible. Based on weather records and survey data, the present research examined whether actual weather events can influence one’s perceptions of unusual weather and belief certainty. Severe Typhoon Fitow 2013, but not hot summer temperatures, directly predicted the Chinese perceived experience of unusual weather and indirectly predicted their belief certainty and attitudes toward mitigation behavior. However, the effects were relatively small. Possible explanations and implications for environmental education are discussed.

Experimental evidence that acorn woodpeckers recognize relationships among third parties no longer living together

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1257-1265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A Pardo ◽  
Eric L Walters ◽  
Walter D Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Melanerpes Formicivorus ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Acorn Woodpeckers ◽  
Group Relationships

Abstract Triadic awareness, or knowledge of the relationships between others, is essential to navigating many complex social interactions. While some animals maintain relationships with former group members post-dispersal, recognizing cross-group relationships between others may be more cognitively challenging than simply recognizing relationships between members of a single group because there is typically much less opportunity to observe interactions between individuals that do not live together. We presented acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus), a highly social species, with playback stimuli consisting of a simulated chorus between two different individuals, a behavior that only occurs naturally between social affiliates. Subjects were expected to respond less rapidly if they perceived the callers as having an affiliative relationship. Females responded more rapidly to a pair of callers that never co-occurred in the same social group, and responded less rapidly to callers that were members of the same social group at the time of the experiment and to callers that last lived in the same group before the subject had hatched. This suggests that female acorn woodpeckers can infer the existence of relationships between conspecifics that live in separate groups by observing them interact after the conspecifics in question no longer live in the same group as each other. This study provides experimental evidence that nonhuman animals may recognize relationships between third parties that no longer live together and emphasizes the potential importance of social knowledge about distant social affiliates.

scholarly journals Climate signals in a multispecies tree-ring network from central and southern Italy and reconstruction of the late summer temperatures since the early 1700s

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1451-1471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Leonelli ◽  
Anna Coppola ◽  
Maria Cristina Salvatore ◽  
Carlo Baroni ◽  
Giovanna Battipaglia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Summer Precipitation ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Summer Drought ◽  
Stable Model ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Reconstructed Temperature ◽  
Instrumental Record ◽  
Summer Temperatures ◽  
Climate Signals

Abstract. A first assessment of the main climatic drivers that modulate the tree-ring width (RW) and maximum latewood density (MXD) along the Italian Peninsula and northeastern Sicily was performed using 27 forest sites, which include conifers (RW and MXD) and broadleaves (only RW). Tree-ring data were compared using the correlation analysis of the monthly and seasonal variables of temperature, precipitation and standardized precipitation index (SPI, used to characterize meteorological droughts) against each species-specific site chronology and against the highly sensitive to climate (HSTC) chronologies (based on selected indexed individual series). We find that climate signals in conifer MXD are stronger and more stable over time than those in conifer and broadleaf RW. In particular, conifer MXD variability is directly influenced by the late summer (August, September) temperature and is inversely influenced by the summer precipitation and droughts (SPI at a timescale of 3 months). The MXD sensitivity to August–September (AS) temperature and to summer drought is mainly driven by the latitudinal gradient of summer precipitation amounts, with sites in the northern Apennines showing stronger climate signals than sites in the south. Conifer RW is influenced by the temperature and drought of the previous summer, whereas broadleaf RW is more influenced by summer precipitation and drought of the current growing season. The reconstruction of the late summer temperatures for the Italian Peninsula for the past 300 years, based on the HSTC chronology of conifer MXD, shows a stable model performance that underlines periods of climatic cooling (and likely also wetter conditions) in 1699, 1740, 1814, 1914 and 1938, and follows well the variability of the instrumental record and of other tree-ring-based reconstructions in the region. Considering a 20-year low-pass-filtered series, the reconstructed temperature record consistently deviates < 1 °C from the instrumental record. This divergence may also be due to the precipitation patterns and drought stresses that influence the tree-ring MXD at our study sites. The reconstructed late summer temperature variability is also linked to summer drought conditions and it is valid for the west–east oriented region including Sardinia, Sicily, the Italian Peninsula and the western Balkan area along the Adriatic coast.

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