#057 Life According to the Weather

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 57

Life According to the Weather

Did you know that you can calculate the atmospheric temperature by using a cricket? Yes it is true and I can even give you the formula if you like. But did you also know that dogs can sense a coming storm? Did you know that sharks can sense an approaching hurricane? And some animals are capable of genetic adaptation in less than 5 years.

All of these things are true simply because animals, and even plants, are much more attuned to the environment than the average human. As humans, we have long since mastered the art of manipulating our environment. But living life according to the weather is far more sustainable. To get the full scoop, then listen to this episode called Life According to the Weather.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E57 which is called Life According to the Weather.

Arguably, for better or for worse, we humans we have long since mastered the art of manipulating our environment. Consequently, we are far less attuned to the environment and far less adaptable than most animals and even plants.

The common cricket is a perfect example of just how attuned some critters are to their environment. There actually is a relationship between the cricket’s chirp and the environmental temperature. It is called Dolbear’s Law, named after the American physicist Amos Dolbear who published an article on the topic in 1897 called The Cricket as Thermometer.

But the basic explanation is that the cricket is a cold blooded animal. With an increase in environmental temperature there is a corresponding increase in the cricket’s metabolism. Consequently, there is more energy available for muscular activity and in this case, chirping. Dr. Dolbear spent hours observing the snowy tree cricket to come up with his equation. It is believed to be accurate to within one degree using the common field cricket.

Here is how it works: Count the number of chirps you hear in 15 seconds. Add 37. The sum is equal to the approximate environmental temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

And I do have a link to this article in the transcript for this episode is you want the actual formula.

Scientist also think that dogs can sense a change in barometric pressure with a coming storm. So they start behaving differently and they hide.

Researchers were tracking the behavior of a group of sharks during severe weather events and noted that they would swim too much deeper water with an approaching hurricane.

Birds and bees also seem to be able to sense this change in barometric pressure as they seem to seek the protection of their nests and hives with an approaching storm.

When I lived in Saint Kitts I observed a very different type of adaptation. Saint Kitts has a nice volcanic cone with an elevation of 1,156 meters which is about 3,792 feet. It is truly amazing to see the transformation of plant life as you go from the coast to the tops of the mountain.

The coast line is somewhat arid and there are lots of trees with thorns and even cactus. You even see an occasional Manchineel tree, which is one of the most poisonous trees in the world. If you stand under it while it is raining, the sap from the tree burns like acid. But when you hike to the tops of the mountains, the jungle literally looks as if you are walking through Jurassic Park. So this is a true example of how most plants live in specific climate zones that are suitable for their survival.

Interestingly enough, biologist and various other scientists are now noticing obvious changes and adaptations in various plant and animal species due to climate change. What we do know is that any change in climate in a particular area can and often does affect the plants and animals in that location and the entire ecosystem for that matter.

For example, climate change, and in our present case, meaning warmer temperatures on average, alters the lifecycles of plants and animals. As temperatures get warmer, plants bloom earlier in the spring and stay active later into the fall. In fact, I even noticed that at the cabin this year. Never have I seen so many wild flowers still in bloom into late September and early October when typically it starts snowing in early October.

Now maybe you have heard before how everything on our planet is interconnected in some way. If you change one thing, it affects something else. Well, allow me to give you a few examples of this.

The pied flycatchers in the Netherlands. These birds are still maintaining their normal migratory pattern from Africa to the Netherlands to breed. However, by the time they reach their destination, the staple food supply they use to feed their young, which is the winter moth caterpillars, have already fed on the oak leaves that now sprout earlier and they have moved on. The end result is that Flycatcher populations have declined by 90 percent in some areas.

Australia’s endangered mountain pygmy possums are coming out of hibernation earlier due to earlier snowmelt. But their primary food supply, the bogong moths, are migrating to the mountains at their normal time which leaves the early emerging possums without their normal food supply.

Caribou in Greenland are still migrating at their normal time. But they also have a diminished food supply due to arctic spring growth starting 26 days earlier than it did 10 years ago.

And just to give one more example, because this is one that I love because I am a scuba diver. Researchers have discovered that some types of coral have begun to adapt to temperature changes in the ocean. Now if you want more information about how coral is truly an important species, then go back and listen to E25 The Keystone Life of Coral.

Now coral are very sensitive to increasing temperatures which causes bleaching. This happens when coral loose the algae that lives in their tissue and gives them the nice colors that we see. This is a very bad thing because the coral and the algae have a nice cooperative relationship which helps both species to survive. However, one study suggested that coral may be shifting to favor a species of algae that is much more tolerant to temperature changes.

But what is alarming is that these types of events are occurring all over the world and there are many more examples. But for now I do have a link to an article titled Ten Species That Are Evolving Due to Climate Change. It is published by Smithsonian and it talks about mosquitos, squirrels, salmon, owls, as well as some other species. It really is quite an interesting article so go check it out.

Now as far as people are concerned, we have certainly become masters at manipulating our own environment in various ways to our advantage. Instead of being attuned to our environment, we choose to manipulate it and we have done this for thousands of years. Little did we know that our environmental manipulation would have far reaching and unpredictable affects.

For example, when we clear land for agriculture, timber, and paper production. We build a dam on a river for water storage power production. While this may seem advantageous, we are not only affecting the local environment but multiple other ecosystems. When a dam is built, less water flows downstream which of course affects that ecosystem.

For example, the first electrical powered air conditioning unit was designed in 1902 by a man named Willis Carrier. That was of course followed by rapid development by numerous other folks. In 1940 only 1 in 400 US homes had air conditioning. But by 2016, roughly 87% of US homes had central heat and air. And of course there has been a whole evolution of the cooling agents used in air conditioners and refrigerators because of ozone damage.

And you will love this one. In 2019 engineers at the University of Missouri designed wearable air conditioning which works passively by reflecting solar heat and allowing the body to naturally dissipate heat.

But this is what animals have done since the dawn of time. Animals have a natural balance with the environment, populations wax and wane. And provided there is no human interference, there is a balanced ecosystem. And I think humanity, and the environment of course would greatly benefit if we all lived our lives according to the weather.

With living off the grid the way we do, what the weather is doing has a direct impact on what chores I can do for the day. The time of year has a direct impact on the hours of sunlight. Consequently, in the winter with shorter days, I am much more mindful of our electricity usage. During the winter, the water system we use is converted to a strictly indoor system because otherwise the plumbing would freeze.

The weather also impacts me directly when I use my travel trailer for business. I truly have to pay attention to the temperature and sunlight hours. The travel trailer runs strictly off of solar during the day. I plug it into a 30 amp power source at night. I use retractable window shades, insulated window covers, and take full advantage of natural lighting in order to manipulate the indoor temperature and greatly reduce my use of propane. In fact, I have fine tuned my system to the point that I now use 50% less propane.

But I think this is far more trouble than what most people are willing to under take. Most people would rather push a button, turn a dial, flip a switch and instantly get what they want. But what most people do not realize is that since we do not live life according to the weather, we are now literally affecting the interconnected web of life on this planet. And it will soon come to bear, that humanity itself will be affected. It will come to a point that it impacts our lifestyle, social structure and even our very culture.

And of course, I am going to tell you why.

The study of relationships between environmental conditions and biological processes is called phenology. Examples of this include the date of emergence of leaves and flowers, the first flight of butterflies, the date of egg laying of birds and reptiles, the life cycles of honey bees, the date of leaf color changes in the fall, or the first appearance of migratory birds. These are just a few examples of life cycles that are affected by environmental conditions.

But to continue this line of thought, birds time their nesting so that insect populations are available to feed their young. Correspondingly, the emergence of insects is quite often synchronized with the spring leaf out of the host plants. And this is directly from the website of the National Phenology Network, “Phenology influence the abundance and distribution of organisms, ecosystem services, food webs, and global cycles of water and carbon.”

The practical application of phenology includes predictions of human various human health concerns such as allergy season or mosquito season, management of invasive species, optimizing the timing of planting, fertilizing, and harvesting crops, understanding the timing of ecological processes to assess the vulnerability of species and ecological communities.

Now when things fall out of sync this is known as phase effects or phenological mismatch. But the reason this is a concern is that it can lead to a complete disruption of crop and natural pollination, it can change animal migratory patterns, it can cause outbreaks of pest species and disease carriers, and it can lead to species starvation and extinction. In a 2007 study published in Ecology Letters the study revealed that due to phenological changes there had been a drastic reduction reduction in food supply to over 50% of the 1,430 natural pollinators that were studied.

Now this raises the possibility of a devastating extinction process that has largely gone ignored, that is the extinction of ecological interactions which are responsible for a vital ecosystem service, the pollination of plants. This could easily lead to the extinction of more than 25% of plant and animal species in the next 100 years. Not only that, this could lead to decreased food production, undernutrition, increased hunger, higher food prices, and a complete loss of any sort of food security.

And all because we do not want to live life according to the weather, which by the way is far more sustainable.

So, if you really think about this, what would our country be like if everyone had to live life according to the weather. Well I could tell you that huge portions of the dessert southwest would be uninhabited. Cities such as Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles would most likely not even be there.

Other portions of the country may completely close down in the winter due to the extreme cold. Food production and agriculture would completely shift. We would be forced to eat what was in season instead of depending on what was imported. The entire basis of our economy would fundamentally shift.

Now you may think that is a bit drastic but are these not the very things we are going to have to do in order to deal with all the changes in our world that have already taken place. Because if we don’t pay attention, climate change is going to continue to be a slow, insidious, decisive serial killer that stalks species after species until we see another mass extinction.

But, unlike the salmon that can alter their migration, the coral that can alter the algae species that are used for their nutrition, the tropical fish and gloomy octopus in Australia that are moving further south towards Tasmanian waters, or the species of yeast that can genetically adapt to harsh conditions in just 25 generations, or the mosquitoes that change their hibernation patterns in as little as 5 years, we humans are not going to fair so well. It is all because we are so incredibly slow to change and we insist on manipulating the environment instead of just learning to live life according to the weather.

So, you may not be willing to buy a cricket instead of a thermometer, and I certainly would not depend on the groundhog to predict the coming of Spring, but you certainly can make changes in your own lifestyle to be more sustainable.

But like the tanker ship that takes 15 minutes to stop, the locomotive that takes over a mile to come to a stop, the inertia of our society is not going to stop in an instant. Yet we need to desperately take steps to put the brakes on because it will likely take decades to come to a full stop.

I often get into discussions with friends about the principles of sustainability and renewable energy. And I often say that you had better learn to live sustainably today because tomorrow you may not have a choice. Similarly, we had all better learn how to live life according to the weather because with the rapid onset of changes in our world, tomorrow we may not have a choice.

This is your host Patrick signing off until next week. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.

Resources

Impacts of Climate Change

How Climate Change is Unraveling the Web of Life

How Weather Affects the Way We Live

Climate Change and How to Live With It

How Does Weather Affect Our Daily Lives

The Impact of Weather on Society

Ten Species Are Evolving Due to Climate Change

Episode Transcript