Western biology professor Robert Buchkowski has seen the warming planet directly upend his research, when hot and dry summer conditions have made warming experiments - studies to model how trees respond to climate change - too extreme for the plants to handle.
The rising temperatures mean many of the plants and animals in those kinds of field studies just can't take the heat.
Robert Buchkowski
"There have been a couple of instances now where we're trying to test the effects of some of these drivers, like temperature change or drought, and the drought of the summer ruins the experiment, because it's too dry for the treatments. You have tree-planting failure or you have to supplementally water it to keep everything alive," Buchkowski said.
"This is especially problematic when we want to test the effects of climate change, because a common research design is to go a certain number of degrees above the current temperature. But if it happens to be a really hot year - that might be 42 C at the peak of the summer - that's problematic for a lot of the plants and animals we may want to include in our experiments, they might have a hard time coping with that."
Climate change is wrecking experiments meant to test the results of climate change.
And it's not just happening in the summer.
Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, a psychology professor and cognitive neuroscientist, said the biggest change he's noticed as the planet warms is in the coldest season.
"I do some field work in the winter, with chickadees. Those winters where you have months of cold and deep snow are gone. We still have snow, but then it warms up and it melts, thaws again. A continuous snow cover just doesn't exist anymore," he said.
"It seems like we've gone over a tipping point."
The state of the birds
From extreme rainfall to devastating droughts to changing snow cover, the world's warming is driving big shifts across many plant and animal populations, like invasive species suddenly appearing in areas they never populated before, or other species disappearing from their typical home.
MacDougall-Shackleton, who integrates psychology and biology in his research of animal behaviour - especially among birds - says many scholars have been forced to change the location of their research.
Scott MacDougall-Shackleton
"If you work on a species that's shifting their range or dropping in numbers, your capacity to study them can be greatly reduced," he said. "Many people have had to switch where they do their studies or switch to a different species altogether."
Those movements and population shifts create other challenges.
"As plants and animals shift their ranges, there will emerge new health threats that pose threats to agriculture, our capacity to produce food, as well as threats directly to our health," MacDougall-Shackleton said.
He's experienced it himself while studying song sparrows north of Kingston, Ont.
"We've been studying that population for over 20 years now and there's just been a total change in the number of ticks that are biting us, insect life and pests that never used to be there that are now really common."
The warming temperatures create new risks for many species.
Human health has become a chief concern.
"It's not just birds. As animals change their ranges or their populations rise or fall and new species come in contact with us, it's leading to big changes in diseases. One big fear right now is avian flu leaping to other species," he said.
The hope
Still, there are reasons to hope.
The changes to habitat, food sources, reproductive conditions and migration patterns have also created opportunities for bird species to flourish in new areas.
"It can seem grim, like there's nothing we can do," MacDougall-Shackleton said. "The decline seems inevitable. But if you look back, there was a time when bald eagles were almost completely extinct. Now, I see them fly over the bridge on campus."
Wild turkeys are another example. Once extinct in certain regions, the bird is now flourishing in southwestern Ontario.
He points to conservation milestones, like banning the substance known as DDT in the 1970s, after its environmental, wildlife and human health consequences became known.
"We can look at past successes," MacDougall-Shackleton said.
"If we can mobilize people to preserve habitat in the right places, there can be some coping and recovery of populations. That's really what gives me hope."
Adaptation a key focus
Buchkowski believes more attention should be paid to that kind of adaptation work alongside significant greenhouse gas emission reductions.
"We do have agency to do something about these changes. We need to use scientific understanding to develop infrastructure that's ready to adapt to the changes we're seeing." - Robert Buchkowski, Western biology professor
It also means carefully examining practices like forest management to pivot amid major changes. He uses salvage logging as an example.
Using damaged or unhealthy trees - like those in western Canada ravaged by the mountain pine beetle - to produce timber, and taking the waste products to turn into bioenergy is one example of an opportunity to be found in adaptation.
"We'd prefer the world where the mountain pine beetle didn't clean out the forest, but if we have a world where the forest is cleaned out, we can take advantage of the resources that are available," Buchkowski said.
But experts warn adaptation isn't some kind of silver bullet. It's a last-ditch effort.
Driving change
Buchkowski sees a current of "despair" among his students as they try to address the symptoms and cause of a warming planet.
Gen Z sees a lack of action, and a lack of will among those in power to tackle the issue, he said.
Buchkowski hopes the next generation will get curious about the numbers. It's vital to properly examine so-called "green solutions" and analyze their potential impact, he said.
"I think it's important to think about the scale, and what that difference actually means in the context of our national emissions and our global emissions - to really understand what's being put on offer with some of these programs," he said.
"We should be cognizant as we both adapt and think about nature-based climate solutions, of how effective they really are."
Governments that don't seem to value science are one of MacDougall-Shackleton's biggest worries.
"If you place the economy ahead of the environment, it can only be a short-term solution. The environment will win in the long term," he said.
"We may have to take action that is more expensive right now, to save us in the long run. I worry about short-term thinking, which can happen when times get tough." - Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, Western psychology professor and cognitive neuroscientist
The experts agree, reducing greenhouse gas emissions has to be the top priority. The focus can't be exclusively on band-aids used to make the best of a bad situation.
Buchkowski doesn't use a car to get to work - in his household, they save that for weekend trips. Buying the car was also a carefully thought-out decision. He chose a small, fuel-efficient sedan without the bells and whistles, and it's one he expects to drive for many, many years.
"Those personal tradeoffs are also a good way to think about reducing our own individual emissions, because everyone has a different thing that's easy for them to do," he said.
It took many years to make adjustments, but he looks for what's possible in every part of his life.
"It's tempting to think of this as a crisis and to think that we need to find the optimal solution, but being paralyzed and not doing anything for fear of not getting to the optimum, I would argue, is worse," Buchkowski said.
"We can all look at our lives and figure out the easiest thing to do this month or this year to reduce our carbon emissions."
Read more from Our Warming Planet, a series featuring Western University researchers and scholars addressing the great challenge of our time.
