Seabird McKeon a biodiversity scientist with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
As governments negotiate the best ways to reduce emissions and switch to renewable energy production, scientists are struggling to observe all the global changes taking place. Increasingly, citizen scientists are stepping in to monitor the shifts, a positive step in an uncertain path forward.
In particular, birders and whale watchers are documenting wildlife sightings and revealing shifts in animal movements in the planet's northern hinterlands. These patterns are key for understanding how melting sea ice is influencing species' ranges, and health, in the decades to come, as my co-authors and I discuss in a paper published recently in the journal Global Change Biology.