Time Lags in Terrestrial and Marine Environments

Temporal lags in the response of populations to climatic variation associated with the NAO are widespread in both terrestrial and marine environments. The existence of both immediate and lagged responses to climate presents conceptual and analytical challenges to the study of the ecological consequences of large-scale climatic variability, as well as to the ability to forecast population responses to future climatic change. This chapter discusses the influence of atmospheric processes, life history, and trophic interactions on time lags. It argues that the existence of time lags in a multitude of systems can be exploited to one obvious advantage: prediction. Hence, an empirically-derived basis for improving conceptual and analytical understanding of lagged responses to climate should prove valuable in the pursuit of scientifically robust predictions of population and community response to future climate changes.