Quote:Moth study suggests hidden climate change impacts

ANN ARBOR—A 32-year study of subarctic forest moths in Finnish Lapland suggests that scientists may be underestimating the impacts of climate change on animals and plants because much of the harm is hidden from view.

The study analyzed populations of 80 moth species and found that 90 percent of them were either stable or increasing throughout the study period, from 1978 to 2009. During that time, average annual temperatures at the study site rose 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and winter precipitation increased as well.





“You see it getting warmer, you see it getting wetter and you see that the moth populations are either staying the same or going up. So you might think, ‘Great. The moths like this warmer, wetter climate.’ But that’s not what’s happening,” said ecologist Mark Hunter of the University of Michigan.

Hunter used advanced statistical techniques to examine the roles of different ecological forces affecting the moth populations and found that warmer temperatures and increased precipitation reduced the rates of population growth.

“Every time the weather was particularly warm or particularly wet, it had a negative impact on the rates at which the populations grew,” said Hunter, the Henry A. Gleason Collegiate Professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

“Yet, overall, most of these moth populations are either stable or increasing, so the only possibility is that something else other than climate change—some other factor that we did not measure—is buffering the moths from substantial population reductions and masking the negative effects of climate change.”

Quote:suggests that scientists may be underestimating the impacts of climate change on animals and plants because much of the harm is hidden from view.

(04-15-2014 04:30 PM)QuestionSocratic Wrote:  Honey, where'd you put the naphthalene?

Quote:Even though moths are supposedly affected by climate change, “90 percent of them were either stable or increasing” while the climate where they lived warmed. But wait! Moth scientists know there MUST be an effect, so in contradiction to their observations, the moth scientists claim the climate change effects are now apparently “hidden”.

(04-15-2014 08:36 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  Is every unexplained event now due to global warming?