Your grandchildren may expect spring in February, according to ecologists.
A new paper, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, predicts that, by the year 2100, flowers will begin blooming up to a month earlier than they do now in the U.S., thanks to human-caused climate change.
That's not a huge shock for North Americans, where spring has crept in earlier and earlier. This year, most of North America saw spring two weeks earlier than average, a drastic change, even for this generation. According to Inside Climate News, central Wisconsin has seen a big change in when its flowers have bloomed. Geraniums in this area, for example, now bloom 24 days earlier than they did in 1945. Lest you think it's just a midwestern problem, Wisconsin was only chosen because of one the researchers' access. The problem is widespread across the continent.
The researchers from Ghent, N.Y.-based Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program carefully studied more than 11,000 plant and animal records, from how early birds were mating and migrating, to when frogs were looking for love, to when plants were flowering. While this all might sound most pleasant to those (like me) whose favorite season is spring, it will almost surely spell disaster for many species, including animals that rely on the carefully-evolved schedule by which plants have been available for centuries.
In other words, when plants don't get enough winter, some of them can't survive, and when plants don't survive, the animals that eat them die, too. Already, migratory birds are dying because they follow cues from the sky, rather than temperature changes, to decide when to travel. If they arrive somewhere, exhausted and hungry, to no available food, the flock dies out.
Another critical part of how plants reach maturity is the phenomenon known as "false springs," where plants flower, then get hit with a cold snap, then flower again. In some areas, like the Pacific Northwest, plants have adapted to this cycle for untold millennia. However, climate change has reduced and may completely eradicate false springs, spelling disaster for these species. That's why this research is so essential.
The data will be available freely to anyone who wants to pick up this important work and expand it. It was funded with a NASA Biodiversity Grant, which is given to people and organizations working to increase knowledge of climate change issues, aka saving the frickin' planet.
The researchers say the average change in spring by 2100 will be 23 days, with a projected maximum of 28 days earlier.
Photo: Nana Agyei | Flickr
