Across America, Around The World, Warming Knocks Biological Cycles Out Of Kilter - KC Star

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON | The cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited till around April 5.

In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May.

And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia. On March 9, when allergist Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen was already heavy in the air. Less than two decades ago, that pollen couldn’t be measured until late April. Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying. “The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.

The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year’s report by Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.

EDIT

http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/542673.html

[msongs]

1. so how exactly are these described events "bad"?

plant pollenating earlier, is that bad for the plants?
cherry trees blooming 1 week earlier, how is that bad for the the cherry trees?
the butterfly a month earlier, how is that bad for the butterfly?

maybe these 3 developments are actually better for the participants despite the concerns of self centered human beings who think they are the only life forms that matter in the eyes of nature.

Msongs

[Warpy]

3. It's bad because there can still be a freeze

that will kill the blossoms and prevent fruit from setting. Butterflies might not be around to carry pollen for another couple of weeks, meaning they're going to find precious little to eat.

That's why it's bad.

[hatrack]

4. For example there was the Midwestern Easter Freeze of 2007 . . .

After an unusually warm winter, which prompted plants and trees to flower in profusion, the mercury dropped and stayed down for weeks.

Kansas City recorded a low of 17F on Easter Sunday, April 8th, for example, and temperatures across the Midwest hit all kinds of record lows for the date. This was one reason that US grain output was so bad for the year, since much of the wheat, canola and barley crops in KS, NE, SD, ND were severely damaged by the long freeze.

Missouri orchards and vineyards were also badly hit, with some large commercial operations reporting 80 - 90% losses in apples, peaches, cherries & grapes - as in "no fruit for you".

That's why it's bad.

[fed-up]

5. I think you are intelligent enough to figure that out for yourself-nt

[kestrel91316]

6. Plants may bloom before their pollinators hatch out.

Insects may hatch before the birds dependent on them migrate into the area.

On a geologic time scale, this is the stuff that drives evolution. At near-light-speed (which is the current pace of environmental change), this is the stuff that drives extinction.

[stuntcat]

7. "self centered human beings"

I'm trying to convince myself that the exponential growth of the only species who makes tons of trash and builds ginormous cities and factory farms has nothing to do with the mass extinction of animals and plants.. All the rest of the species have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to share the glorious 21st century with us! :)

[Warpy]

2. I woke up this morning at 6 AM and sneezed 20 times in a row

Damned juniper pollen is a week early this year.

Flowering trees seem to be right on schedule. They burst forth about the middle of last week.

This is NM, a mile up.