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Could migrating animals help fill the gaps in weather data to help us understand our changing climate? Despite the extensive networks of satellites, ocean buoys, weather stations, radar, and balloons currently used to gather information and inform climate predictions, there are still huge regions of the world where it is either impractical or uneconomical to set up monitoring stations. Weather data in the middle of deserts, mountains, and huge forests are hard to come by. A study by Uruguayan ecologist and evolutionary biologist Diego Ellis Soto and others has shown how animals might help gather this information.Tiny, sophisticated tags already attached to animals for ecological and conservation research also gather increasingly fine-scale weather data such as temperature, humidity, wind, and air pollution wherever the animals go. For instance, migrating birds such as storks use thermals, rising columns of warm air, as a way to gain altitude while conserving energy as they travel huge distances. Thermals are normally almost impossible to gather real-time data about because they are so transient. Birds would gather the data naturally, thereby helping us refine our understanding of the role thermals play in the development of storms. Using weather data being gathered by tiny transmitters already attached to study the movements of animals for wildlife conservation, argues the research team, could help open a new window on our understanding of Earth’s changing climate. A flock of Abdim’s Storks riding a thermal at sunset, with a backdrop of Altocumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds, spotted by Yathin S. Krishnappa over Etosha National Park, Namibia.The study referenced here is: Ellis-Soto, D., Wikelski, M. & Jetz, W. Animal-borne sensors as a biologically informed lens on a changing climate. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 1042–1054 (2023).