1. Climate Change & Migratory Behavior
By Randy from Newbury Park, CA
Climate Change & Migratory Behavior
Photo by Agunther
What does climate change mean for the Monarch?
Image 1: By Randy from Newbury Park, California, USA (She Was Completely Transparent With Me) [CC BY 2.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons. File URL:
Image 2: By Agunther (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons. File URL:
Image 3: By Olivier Morisset (By my friend Olivier Morisset, with permission.) [GFDL ( or CC BY 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons. File URL:
Image 4: By Victor Korniyenko (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons. File URL
Photo by V. Kornieyenko
Photo by O. Morisset

2. Opening Discussion The world is warming. How do we know?
What has caused warming?
Discuss the people who live there as well as the ecology of the arctic
Ursula may need to help with generating some discussion

3. Source: GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio
Temperature Change
Map of temperature anomalies
Temperature change over time
Main page: 0/a030400/a030477/
Image is from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Public domain
Source: GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio

4. Plotted Graphically… Graph from Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Image from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies:
Public domain
Graph from Goddard Institute for Space Studies

5. Why warming?
Why is the planet warming in the first place? What do you know about this?
Mechanism: Greenhouse effect
What’s a greenhouse gas?
Can we really change the composition of the atmosphere?
Elicit feedback from the students; if they seem stuck on one of these concepts, then expand on one or more.

6. The Warming Relationship
Increased greenhouse gas content
Heat takes longer to escape Earth
The atmosphere gets warmer, overall
… but warming is uneven and produces different local climatic effects

7. Do butterflies live in a global average temperature?
What about organisms?
Do butterflies live in a global average temperature?
Same image as slide 1

8. Direct Impacts of Warming
2005
Less sea ice
Melting of glaciers and ice sheets
Thawing of permafrost
Images from Goddard Space Flight Center. Public Domain. Image 1 URL: Image 2 URL
Source: GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio

9. Feedbacks – the system isn’t simple
Positive (accelerating) feedback: As temperature increases, changes take place that further increase temperature
Loss of sea ice
Melting of permafrost
Loss of vegetation
Negative (equilibrating) feedback: As temperature increases, changes take place that offset the increase in temperature
More cloud cover
Increase in vegetation
Positive feedbacks dominate at present
Generally speaking, some warming produces further warming
Could skip this for the sake of time

10. Indirect Effects of Warming
Changes in mid-latitude weather patterns
Due to loss of sea ice
Sea level rise
Melting of glaciers and ice sheets
Changes in ocean circulation
Low-density meltwater from ice sheets
Methane release
Thawing of permafrost
Ecological changes
Changes in geographic ranges of animals and plants

11. Climate Projections IPCC Temperature Projections What’s going on here?
Different projections for future greenhouse gas levels
IPCC Temperature Projections
What’s going on here?
Why is this diagram complex?
Uncertainty within single models
This graph is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th assessment report Summary for Policymakers (SPM); Figure SPM.5. URL: A copyright is listed to Cambridge University Press. For this figure and all those from this report (or from the 5th assessment), we need permission to reuse. My thought is that this should be in the public domain (as the whole point of this report is for it to be widely used), but I don’t see any specific statements about use.
Figure SPM.5. Solid lines are multi-model global averages of surface warming (relative to 1980–1999) for the scenarios A2, A1B and B1, shown as continuations of the 20th century simulations. Shading denotes the ±1 standard deviation range of individual model annual averages. The orange line is for the experiment where concentrations were held constant at year 2000 values. The grey bars at right indicate the best estimate (solid line within each bar) and the likely range assessed for the six SRES marker scenarios. The assessment of the best estimate and likely ranges in the grey bars includes the AOGCMs in the left part of the figure, as well as results from a hierarchy of independent models and observational constraints. {Figures 10.4 and 10.29}
Gray shaded areas show range of results using different models.
IPCC Figure SPM.5. – 4th assessment report (2007)

12. Climate Projections
IPCC Temperature Projections How is this one different?
Image from the IPCC 5th assessment report (2013) Summary for Policymakers, Figure 5.
The Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), which are used for making projections based on these factors, describe four different 21st century pathways of GHG emissions and atmospheric concentrations, air pollutant emissions and land use. The RCPs include a stringent mitigation scenario (RCP2.6), two intermediate scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP6.0) and one scenario with very high GHG emissions (RCP8.5). Scenarios without additional efforts to constrain emissions (’baseline scenarios’) lead to pathways ranging between RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (Figure SPM.5a). RCP2.6 is representative of a scenario that aims to keep global warming likely below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. The RCPs are consistent with the wide range of scenarios in the literature as assessed by WGIII5 . {2.1, Box 2.2, 4.3}
Range of results using different models.
Different projections for future greenhouse gas levels
IPCC Figure SPM.5. – 5th assessment report (2013)

13. What Matters to Monarchs?
What do you know about the Monarch life cycle and ecology?
Talk with each other and write down a few things
What climate-related factors might be important to monarchs?
Brainstorm for a couple minutes and write down a few things
First two images are from the IPCC 5th assessment report (2013) – see next slides for detailed info
Right image is cropped from an image with a creative commons license: By Agunther (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons. File URL:
Spatial Patterns
Rainfall Patterns
Distribution of Milkweed

14. Climate Departure
As temperatures rise in an area, they will eventually rise so that they’re above anything that area had previously experienced
The coldest year in the future will be warmer than the warmest year in the past.
This image, and the ones that follow, will be a little tricky. The article:
Mora, C., Frazier, AG, Longman, RJ, et al., 2013, The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability: Nature 502:
Is copyright by Macmillan Publishers (all rights reserved). I’m guessing that we’d probably have to pay Nature, but Camilo Mora (lead author) might be able to provide an author’s draft copy and release copyright for reuse. Here’s where I’d definitely need some help! If it’s useful, his address is
Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers, Ltd: Nature 502, (10 October 2013)

15. Climate Departure
Is this a useful way to think about climate-biology relationships?
Brainstorm a few minutes – why might it be useful or not?

16. What does the model predict?
Projected timing of annual departure
(annual means exceed historical bounds)
What patterns do you observe?
What might this mean for migratory animals?
Mora, C., Frazier, AG, Longman, RJ, et al., 2013, The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability: Nature 502:
Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers, Ltd: Nature 502, (10 October 2013)
Based on RCP8.5 – increasing CO2 emission model

17. What do you think?
What features of the monarchs’ ecology make them resilient to future climate changes?
What features of the monarchs’ ecology make them vulnerable?
Brainstorm for a couple minutes and write down a few things
In what ways can the vulnerability be addressed?
What do we need to know about climate?
What do we need to know about monarchs?
Spatial Patterns
Rainfall Patterns
Distribution of Milkweed