Greetings All,
The occurrence (up to 15 years or so ago) of Long-billed and Ancient Murrelets
with weather patterns have been carefully studied:
Dr. Steven Feldstein of Pennsylvania StateUniversity's Earth System Science
Center reviewed interior and easternLong-billed Murrelet sightings to search
for a connection between these recordsand atmospheric conditions. No such
correlation was sought for coastal recordsbecause of the biases in these
records. Feldstein found that the majority ofmid-fall to mid-winter perdix
recordshave been associated with storms that occurred off the east coast of
Asiabetween Japan and the Kamchatka Peninsula within two to three days of
eachrecord. This correlation seems quite plausible and may well be correct, but
itdid not meet statistical significance (p>.05).A similar finding exists for
Ancient Murrelets, a species in which inlandrecords seem to be related, at
least in part, to fall storms moving inland fromthe Gulf of Alaska (Munyer
1965, Verbeek 1966, Sealy and Carter 1980).Feldstein also discovered that the
pattern of mid-tropospheric atmosphericcirculation (approximately five
kilometers above the surface) is significantlycorrelated (p<.05) with inland
andeastern perdix records during themid-fall to mid-winter period. These
records of Long-billed Murrelets are muchmore likely to occur when the
mid-tropospheric circulation tracks from the Gulfof Alaska and North Pacific
into the Alaskan interior.
It seems that most inland Long-billed Murrelets (aka, perdix) and Ancient
Murrelets are pushed east of the Rockies in Alaska, not farther south, so
weather in WA would be correlated only as a surrogate marker for storms
occurring (or that had recently occurred) farther north.
>From Baja California
Steve Mlodinow
San Jose del Cabo, BCS
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