[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] How the blurring of the seasons is a harbinger of climate calamity

[Bill Totten]

by Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Independent.co.uk (March 20 2008)


Spring, which officially starts today, is starting to dissolve as a
distinct season as climate change takes hold.

According to documented observations throughout 2007 and 2008, events in
the natural world that used to be key spring indicators, from the
blooming of flowers to the appearance of insects, are now increasingly
happening in what used to be thought of as mid-winter, as Britain's
temperatures steadily rise.

Although many people may see the changes as quaint or charming -
butterflies certainly brighten up a January day - they are actually
among the first concrete signs that the world is indeed set on a global
warming course which is likely to prove disastrous if not checked.

In fact, the blurring of the seasons in Britain is now as serious a
piece of evidence of climate change as the rapidly increasing melting of
ice across the globe, in glaciers and in the land-based and marine ice
sheets of the Arctic and the Antarctic.

The phenomenon shows that a whole range of organisms is already
responding actively to the greatest environmental change in human
history, in a way that people - and especially politicians - are not.

Last month, that shift produced its most remarkable image yet - a
photograph, taken in Dorset, of a red admiral, an archetypal British
summer butterfly, feeding on a snowdrop, an archetypal British winter
flower.

Although that is not an event likely to cause alarm among the public, it
was quite inconceivable until very recently. It is undeniable
confirmation that a profound alteration in the environment, the
consequences of which are likely to prove catastrophic, is already under
way.

It is happening so quickly, and without people realising its true
significance, because, in Britain, the major effects of climate change
are initially being felt as less cold winters, rather than as hotter
summers.

That has produced a startling rise in winter temperatures in recent
years, clearly visible when current monthly means are compared to the
average for 1961 to 1990.

To take the figures for last winter from the Central England Temperature
Record, the world's oldest, which dates back to 1659: January 2007 was
3.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1961-90 average, February was 2.0
degrees Celsius warmer, March was 1.5  degrees warmer, and April was 3.3
degrees warmer. So far this year, January has been 2.8 degrees above the
1961-90 average for the month, and February, 1.6 degrees.

Those are substantial rises. Although there is always natural variation
in temperatures, recent winters taken together show a remarkable warming
trend.

It has meant that many of what used to be thought of as the traditional
signs of spring are happening very much earlier, causing primroses, for
example, spring flowers par excellence, to bloom in some parts of the
country as early as November. Other traditional spring plants, such as
dog's mercury and the lesser celandine (a favourite of Wordsworth's) can
be seen in January rather than March.

And in what is perhaps an even more vivid change, dandelions and
daisies, which used to come into flower in spring on lawns (where they
were permitted), now flower in many places all winter long.

Insects are responding similarly. A number of butterflies that
overwinter as hibernating adults can now be seen in January rather than
March or April, including the peacock and the comma, and especially the
red admiral.

This last species used to be a spring migrant from the Continent but, in
the recent warmer winters, it has begun to overwinter here.

Bumblebees have similarly become visible in mid-winter, and frogspawn,
usually laid about March, can be seen in December in the South-west and
south Wales.

The changes and many others have been monitored in detail because in
Britain there has been a renewal of the old discipline of phenology, or
the study of the timings of natural events, which was favoured by the
Victorians but largely abandoned by the 1950s.

It has been revived by an environmental statistician, Dr Tim Sparks from
the Monks Wood wildlife research centre near Huntingdon, part of the
Government's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

Dr Sparks set up the UK Phenology Network, which has been taken over by
the Woodland Trust, a charity which runs it in partnership with CEH as
Nature's Calendar, with 40,000 people from all over Britain contributing
records.

"We do have problems now recording some of what used to be signs of
spring", Dr Sparks said last night. "For example, we used to record the
first grass cutting of the year. But in many places now grass grows all
year round and so it has to be cut all year round."

Until 1947, said Dr Sparks, the Royal Meteorological Society used to
produce an annual Phenological Report, the front-page logo of which was
a song thrush singing against a background of hazel catkins.

"A major sign of spring used to be the first time a song thrush was
heard singing", he said. "But now song thrushes can be heard all through
the winter, and hazel catkins can be found in December to January,
rather than in January to February".

The shift was largely a phenomenon of southern Britain, he said, and
traditional spring signs were still likely to be seen in Scotland. In
southern England, oak leaves are sprouting 26 days before they did in
1950, while swallows, house sparrows, great tits and robins are laying
their eggs a week earlier on average.

Poppies are a fortnight ahead of where they used to be, and stinging
nettles ten days ahead. Last April, the earliest-ever emergence dates
were recorded for eleven species of butterfly: the speckled wood, for
instance, was seen in January, seven weeks earlier than ever before.

The irony of course, is that the first days of spring 2008 are likely to
be startlingly cold. But not withstanding the predicted Easter snap,
there can be no doubt that spring has already sprung.

(c) independent.co.uk

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/how-the-blurring-of-the-seasons-is-a-harbinger-of-climate-calamity-798379.html

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