Extreme Heat is Killing Wildlife
In late May, eight endangered Asiatic lions died at a national park in India. Officials feared the animals had succumbed to a tick-borne parasitic disease that previously killed lions in the area.
However, over the weekend, the Gujarat government announced that the lions’ real killer was extreme heat, according to The Hindu. These casualties add to a mounting heat-related death toll for animal species around the world as climate change accelerates.
A New Early Warning System
A new early warning system aims to forecast when and where terrestrial vertebrate species will be exposed to extreme heat up to nine months in advance, which could give governments a chance to help the animals most at risk.
In recent years, extreme heat has devastated species across the animal kingdom. Howler monkeys suffering from heat stroke fell from trees in Mexico, thousands of flying foxes perished during a heat wave in Australia, and millions of marine creatures boiled and starved off the United States West Coast and Alaska when ocean temperatures skyrocketed between 2014 and 2016.
Forecasting Heat Risk
A growing body of research finds the problem will only get worse in the coming decades, with thousands of species facing extinction by 2100 due to extreme heat and land-use change.
The new early warning system, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, combines forecasts from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System with species-specific historical temperature limits for more than 30,000 mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.
The system predicted that between May 2024 and February 2025, more than 3,500 species would be exposed to temperatures higher than previously experienced across their known ranges.
Geographic ranges for amphibians and reptiles were expected to have the highest percentage of heat exposure, while birds had lower proportions of their ranges in that higher temperature threshold.
Conclusion
While the new early warning system is an important tool for predicting and mitigating the effects of extreme heat on wildlife, it is crucial to recognize the current limitations and work to improve the accuracy and predictive capability.
Source / Reference: https://mailchi.mp/insideclimatenews/extreme-heat-is-killing-wildlife-a-new-tool-could-help?e=9c8d2e8aae