The same solar storms that can paint the polar skies with dancing lights might also interfere with a very different phenomenon: bird migration.
Space weather includes the solar wind of charged particles that constantly streams across the solar system; coronal mass ejections that send blobs of the sun’s plasma into space; and solar flares that shoot bursts of radiation from our star. When the researchers compared 23 years’ worth of radar data from across the central U.S. with magnetic field measurements from the stations, the scientists found a noticeable decrease in the sheer number of birds migrating on nights with high geomagnetic activity.
“It shouldn’t be surprising to us that they can respond and that they’re flexible and that this doesn’t show them for a complete loop and that they use other cues,” Ramenofsky says. “There’s so much information out there, and birds tend to use it all.”