NEW YORK, BRONX (ORDO News) — During seasonal migrations, birds and other animals navigate using the geomagnetic field. However, coronal mass ejections on the Sun regularly provoke magnetic storms on Earth, which can temporarily disrupt the navigation process of birds on long-distance flights. Researchers from the University of Michigan and several other US universities have found evidence of a relationship between the dynamics of night migration of birds and geomagnetic disturbances.
In the work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , scientists used data from an extensive network of Doppler weather radars in the United States. This long-term array characterizes the dynamics of the night migration of birds living in North America over 22 years.
The sample included 1.7 million radar images taken in the fall and 1.4 million in the spring. They were compared with readings from ground-based magnetometers located near weather radars to determine the local magnetic disturbance index.
After adjusting for the effects of atmospheric weather and space-time conditions, the researchers found that during times of strong geomagnetic disturbances, bird migration rates in the spring and fall fell by 9-17%.
Scientists also found that in the autumn, during geomagnetic disturbances, migratory birds often drifted with the wind, spending less effort to fly against the headwind in the right direction. According to experts, “flying with effort” against the wind decreased especially noticeably in cloudy weather and during strong solar storms. From this we can conclude that in such conditions, the navigation of migrating birds was hampered by two factors at once – deterioration in the visibility of celestial landmarks and magnetic storms.
“Our results suggest that fewer birds migrate during times of strong geomagnetic disturbances. They likely have more difficulty navigating, especially in cloudy weather in the fall. This means that birds can spend less effort actively flying in the desired direction and move more in accordance with the wind,” explained lead author of the scientific paper Eric Galzón-Castillo.
Previous research has repeatedly shown that birds, sea turtles and other species take small changes in magnetic inclination and magnetic field strength into account when choosing which direction to move. In one recent paper , scientists used a large sample of data on ringed birds to trace the connection between geomagnetic disturbances and an increase in the number of cases of so-called vagrancy, when migratory birds become lost during migration.
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News agencies contributed to this report, edited and published by ORDO News editors.
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