Arizona Game and Fish Department
Meteorologist
Daniel McFarland is a AMS Certified Meteorologist and multi-skilled journalist who joined News 4 Tucson in December 2019.
Arizona Game and Fish Department
TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) — We are currently in a period of Extinction for many species on Earth and some of those are going extinct because they’re running out of room on mountains due to heat.
Elevator Extinction is what it’s called and that is when animals are used to being on mountains like the Catalinas and because of warming temperatures they continue to move up the mountain and eventually run out of space. That’s something we could see here in Arizona with some of our own animals.
Elevator Extinction is what it’s called and that is when animals are used to being on mountains like the Catalinas and because of warming temperatures they continue to move up the mountain and eventually run out of space.
Gordon Nuttall grew up in the Rocky mountains and is originally from Colorado. He saw temperatures impacting high elevation animals in that state and he is beginning to see the same kind of impact here in Tucson.
He said, “Those creatures that are acclimated for those higher elevations like the pica, they move up and they have to keep moving up and they keep moving up and the lower elevation animals and vegetation starts to move up the mountainside and pretty soon there’s nowhere for those higher elevation animals to exist. They go extinct because of the warming of the climate.”
What is unique about our climate in Southern Arizona is that we have sky islands where you have a totally different climate at the top of the mountains versus ground level which means we have very diverse species on the way up our mountains.
“Sky Islands are basically the same kind of phenomenon. As the base level in the Tucson valley warms up, those vegetation and other animals tend to go up higher and higher in the sky islands.”
Meteorologist
Daniel McFarland is a AMS Certified Meteorologist and multi-skilled journalist who joined News 4 Tucson in December 2019.
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