RNCEP: global weather and climate data at your fingertips

Kemp, Michael U.; Loon, E. Emiel van; Shamoun‐Baranes, Judy; Bouten, W.

doi:10.1111/j.2041-210x.2011.00138.x

Cited by 218 publications

(225 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(27 reference statements)

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“…The conversion of pressure values to altitude was performed solving the equation for the standard atmosphere [53]. Wind components were interpolated in space from the original 2.58 Â 2.58 grid using the inverse distance weighting method [52]. Interpolation in time occurred only for annotation at stopover arrival and departure time.…”

Section: (D) Wind Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stopover locations before the Sahara crossing and the migration trajectories across the Sahara were annotated with the wind field components from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) [50] using the software R v. 3.2.3 [51] and the package RNCEP 1.0.7 [52]. Since GLS data do not provide information on the swifts' flight altitude, we analysed winds at six of the available pressure levels in the NCEP database (i.e.…”

Section: (D) Wind Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Negotiating an ecological barrier: crossing the Sahara in relation to winds by common swifts

Åkesson

Bianco

Hedenström

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 17 to a theme issue 'Moving in a moving medium: new perspectives on flight'. The Sahara Desert is one of the largest land-based barriers on the Earth, crossed twice each year by billions of birds on migration. Here we investigate how common swifts migrating between breeding sites in Sweden and wintering areas in sub-Saharan Africa perform the desert crossing with respect to route choice, winds, timing and speed of migration by analysing 72 geolocator tracks recording migration. The swifts cross western Sahara on a broad front in autumn, while in spring they seem to use three alternative routes across the Sahara, a western, a central and an eastern route across the Arabian Peninsula, with most birds using the western route. The swifts show slower migration and travel speeds, and make longer detours with more stops in autumn compared with spring. In spring, the stopover period in West Africa coincided with mostly favourable winds, but birds remained in the area, suggesting fuelling. The western route provided more tailwind assistance compared with the central route for our tracked swifts in spring, but not in autumn. The ultimate explanation for the evolution of a preferred western route is presumably a combination of matching rich foraging conditions (swarming insects) and favourable winds enabling fast spring migration.This article is part of the themed issue 'Moving in a moving medium: new perspectives on flight'.

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Section: (D) Wind Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (D) Wind Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating an ecological barrier: crossing the Sahara in relation to winds by common swifts

Åkesson

Bianco

Hedenström

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Weather variables came from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research Reanalysis II dataset [27]. We used the RNCEP package [28] We manually classified 5733 data points generated from 13 of these eagles into the four classes described in the methods (G, O, T and U). We identified golden eagle use of subsidized flight in 87% of data points.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of multiple modes of flight subsidy by a soaring terrestrial bird, the golden eagleAquila chrysaetos, when on migration

Katzner

Turk

Duerr

et al. 2015

J. R. Soc. Interface.

103

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Large birds regularly use updrafts to subsidize flight. Although most research on soaring bird flight has focused on use of thermal updrafts, there is evidence suggesting that many species are likely to use multiple modes of subsidy. We tested the degree to which a large soaring species uses multiple modes of subsidy to provide insights into the decision-making that underlies flight behaviour. We statistically classified more than 22 000 global positioning satellite-global system for mobile communications telemetry points collected at 30-s intervals to identify the type of subsidized flight used by 32 migrating golden eagles during spring in eastern North America. Eagles used subsidized flight on 87% of their journey. They spent 41.9% + 1.5 ( x + s:e:m:, range: 18-56%) of their subsidized northbound migration using thermal soaring, 45.2% + 2.1 (12-65%) of time gliding between thermals, and 12.9% + 2.2 (1-55%) of time using orographic updrafts. Golden eagles responded to the variable local-scale meteorological events they encountered by switching flight behaviour to take advantage of multiple modes of subsidy. Orographic soaring occurred more frequently in morning and evening, earlier in the migration season, and when crosswinds and tail winds were greatest. Switching between flight modes allowed migration for relatively longer periods each day and frequent switching behaviour has implications for a better understanding of avian flight behaviour and of the evolution of use of subsidy in flight.

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“…html (Kalnay et al 1996)). Wind data were obtained via the BRNCEP^R-package (Kemp et al 2012b) for four different pressure levels (1000 Bsurface^, 925, 850, and 700 mbar).…”

Section: Body Condition and Wind Conditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Start of nocturnal migratory restlessness in captive birds predicts nocturnal departure time in free-flying birds

Schmaljohann

Kämpfer

Fritzsch

et al. 2015

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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In nocturnal songbird migrants, total speed of migration is determined by the time birds stay at stopovers, where they replenish fuel reserves used during previous flights, and by their travel speed. In contrast to factors influencing stopover duration, little is known about individual variation in travel speed which is a combination of birds' ground speed and the time spent flying. The latter is directly affected by nocturnal departure time. Ground speed can be easily tracked, e.g., by radar, but not much is known about when migrants set off within the night, let alone factors influencing its variation. Studying how factors cause variation in nocturnal departure time requires an experimental setup that allows transferring results from indoor experiments, where environmental conditions can be controlled for or manipulated, to the behavior of free-flying birds. Here, we show that the start of nocturnal migratory restlessness "Zugunruhe^of caged songbirds was significantly positively related to their radio-tracked nocturnal departure time the following night. We can now start identifying factors causing individual variation in the start of nocturnal migratory restlessness and transfer these results to departure times within the night. This will improve our understanding of why travel speed, and with that total speed of migration, varies individually and how it is affected by environmental changes.

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RNCEP: global weather and climate data at your fingertips

Cited by 218 publications

References 38 publications

Negotiating an ecological barrier: crossing the Sahara in relation to winds by common swifts

Negotiating an ecological barrier: crossing the Sahara in relation to winds by common swifts

Use of multiple modes of flight subsidy by a soaring terrestrial bird, the golden eagleAquila chrysaetos, when on migration

Start of nocturnal migratory restlessness in captive birds predicts nocturnal departure time in free-flying birds

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