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Richard Primack / Boston University
This viola is one of many plants flowering earlier than when long-term observations began with Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold.
By John Roach, NBC News
During the exceptionally warm springs of 2010 and 2012, plants bloomed earlier in the eastern U.S. than they have since the American writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau started keeping records near Walden Pond in 1852.
Many plants now flower several weeks earlier than they did in the 19th century, a response linked to increasingly warmer springs due to global climate change.
For example, in Massachusetts, plants are flowering 20 days earlier now than they were during Thoreau’s time. In Wisconsin, where data on flowering dates was recorded by environmentalist and writer Aldo Leopold in the 1930s, flowering dates are, on average, 24 days earlier.
So far, plants are adjusting to the earlier flowering without any major complications. But scientists are concerned a shortened winter will rob them of the time they need to undergo the physiological changes that allow them to reproduce come spring.
To find out if this threshold was near, Harvard University evolutionary biologist Charles Davis and colleagues turned to the warmest two springs in the eastern U.S. on record. In Massachusetts, where Walden Pond lies, plants flowered on April 24 in 2010 and April 25 in 2012. They did just fine.
"My fear is that people will see, like wow, there is some built-in resiliency here that was unexpected — namely that plants are able to continue to push their flowering times earlier with warming temperatures," Davis told NBC News.
"But I think the jury is still out on whether or not this is clearly a good or clearly a bad thing."
The concerns are many. An earlier flowering date raises the odds that a late spring frost will kill the flowers before they have a chance to attract the birds and bees needed for pollination and reproduction.
Richard Primack / Boston University
A pink lady's slipper orchid is among the earlier flowering plants.
If the birds, bees and other insects can’t pollinate the flowers, the creatures that eat the pollinators too will run into a lack of food.
Earlier flowering plants also mean an earlier start to the cycle of plants taking up and transpiring water and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and turning it into plant biomass.
"You end up with the whole ecosystem being affected," Libby Ellwood, a biologist at Boston University and co-author of a paper describing the finds published online Wednesday the journal PLoS One, told NBC News.
She expects there will be some winners and losers due to the earlier flowering. For example, some plants may take good advantage of a longer growing season, but might also have a greater chance of being impacted by drought.
A particular charm of the study comes from its dataset stretching back to records of Thoreau and Leopold, noted the researchers.
Without their data, the context for how much the flowering dates have changed in recent years would be lost.
What’s more, the length of the dataset allowed the researchers to create a model that predicts a plant's response to warming temperatures. Plug in a temperature variable and out comes a range of possible flowering dates. “These recent years fell into that equation,” noted Ellwood.
Davis, too, sees the charm in the data.
“In a funny sort of way, Thoreau and Leopold are being acknowledged as modern climatologists,” he said.
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website.
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I can't believe it, those flowers have fallen for the liberal hoax!
Watch. It won’t be long now until someone points out to the flowers that LA actually had one day with a record low this year and how that should prove that the warming trend is just a figment of their imagination.
Silly flowers! They are soooo gullible!
BELIEVE IT!
We noticed a Hummingbird last week, that was fooled into staying on into winter here in the far NXNW.
Thank God, the local home and garden store still had a Hummingbird feeder and food. We promptly set out the gift, along with a smaller feeder with seeds for the resident flock of Finches. They all loved it.
'King Tides', Robins, and Hummingbirds, in the middle of January, are signs we should heed.
Remember to feed nature's refugees of global warming.
In Minnesota some of us would welcome a little Global warming, especially in the middle of January.
Then don't expect Minnesota to be the same. Sometimes what one wishes for isn't what they expect.
Forecast for Philadelphia this weekend is sunny and high 40s while they are expecting snow south of us. That makes sense. Nothing funny is going on.
Now to return everybody to their previously viewed program sponsored by BP, Shell, and Exxon...
http://www.weather.com/news/weather-winter/winter-storm-iago-20130116
http://www.weather.com/weather/5-day/Philadelphia+PA+USPA1276:1:US
82 here.
global warming disrupts natural systems. it disrupts manmade systems. the warmer it gets, the more rapidly the world will change and the more intensly will the effects be felt. our civilization was built on relatively stable climate over the past 10,000 years; warming slowly. with rapid warming caused by emissions of greenhouse gasses, the world will change in unpredictable ways. some will benefit, but the suffering of others will be extreme. It's amazing that so many people have so little regard for this wonderful planet and it's incredible life that they are willing to throw it down the drain rather than face reality.
It is disheartening that mankind has been given so much sound scientifically backed data and generally refuses to do anything of consequence to change its fossil fuel habits.
Are you all some fundamentalist religion zealots? The world is more than ten thousand years old. Plants have survived when there were no winters at all. Get a grip on yourselves.
In the span of time (for geology and even botany), records from 1852 are just a brief moment ago. We won't really have anything valid to study until there are records for tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years.
One thing is certain - weather changes. Some reasons are natural - some are man-made - some we don't know. If there were no humans on the planet, weather would still have extreme variations. There are geological records that show this.
mailman, botanists have been studying pollen that has accumulated over 1000s of years on lake bottoms, geologists study sediment and ice core sample that also go back 1000s of years. Even 2ritten evidence on botany and agriculture go back 1000s of years. We do have a lot of evidence that goes back a long time that you are apparently not aware of. Why would anyone pay attention to you?
The opposite has held true the past week for the West. We went through a severe cold snap. Highs did not get over 55 for most of the last five days and the lows were usually below freezing. This is in Phoenix Arizona. Makes me think 2013 is going to be a bad year for extreme weather.
I wouldn't worry about the flowers. They have been around for millions and millions of years and have survivied when there were no cold winters at all. I get sick of all these alarmist 'scientists'. They act like the world was only 10 thousand years old.
I'm not all that worried about flowers. I'm worried about fruits and vegetables. How many apples do you think we'll get if apple trees start blooming in February? Early spring doesn't mean winter's over. Those blooms will be killed by a seasonal freeze, and guess what. No apples. In central NC, there are trees in full bloom right NOW that shouldn't start flowering until March. Next week we're due for very cold temps, and those blooms will be gone for the season.
Happened in the Midwest this year. Most of the apple crop was lost due to early flowering followed by a hard freeze. Drought didn't help the few flowers that survived, either.
Last year Michigan was hit by a far-too-early warm spell, fruit trees blossomed, and then were killed by a hard frost.
Last year was the worst year in history for Michigan fruit.
90% of the tart cherry crop was lost. (Michigan provides 75% of the tart cherries - those used in pies and such - for the entire nation.)
The cold snaps killed not only cherries, but also juice grapes, peaches, and apples. Losses across the state are estimated at $210 million. Farmers were devastated. Seasonal workers were unemployed. Processors were forced to shut down operation lines, and producers imported cherries from as far away as Poland to meet demands.
This isn't the first time Michigan experienced such a devastating season. A similar extremely early spring followed by frost events occurred in 2002. We thought that was really a statistical outlier, and 10 years later we have a very similar situation. It's really disconcerting when we have two once-in-a-lifetime events within an 11-year period.
It was a financial disaster for us in this part of Michigan, and it is a hardship for everyone who paid huge price increases for fruit.
"But I think the jury is still out on whether or not this is clearly a good or clearly a bad thing."
It's a thing - an observation. Why attach values to every measurement?
Sounds more like the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI). You have a part of the nation that contains a huge concentration of human population today compared to the 19th century. All of those man made structures, buildings, roads, parking lots, airports, etc cover much of the land that was rural in the 19th century. Those man made items are made with brick, concrete and asphalt which all absorb more heat than natural items like dirt, grass and trees. Those items then radiate the heat back out more slowly so the temperatures at night do not fall as much had it still been dirt, grass and trees.
Add in heat generated from automobile engines, truck engines, locomotive engines, jet engines, heated pipes underground, etc.
UHI even distorts readings from weather stations. NOAA has admitted that over 70% of the current weather station system is improperly sited. Due to growth and expansion these stations are now too close to buildings, parking lots, air conditioning units, even barbeque grills. Man made items that absorb more heat and radiate it back out more slowly.
It is this corrupted weather station system in current use that resulted in the 'hottest summer ever", hottest July ever", "hottest year ever" claims for the United States this year.
But NOAA has a new system of properly sited stations that are evenly spread across the United States. This new system recorded temperatures that averaged 2 degrees COOLER for July which was 1.9 degrees COOLER than the record set in the 1930s. In some areas the new stations measured temperatures that were 7 degrees COOLER than the nearest improperly sited corrupted current station.
I live in a city of 65,000 people. But it is surrounded by rural countryside, farms, ranches, very small towns. It takes just minutes to drive from a man made concrete jungle to fields and prairie. If your car has a thermometer you can watch how quickly the temperature changes when driving from one to the other. If you have your windows down you can feel how quickly the temperature changes.
That is UHI, the Urban Heat Island effect.
Plants close to man made artificial heat sources are going to bloom earlier and lose its leaves later. There is a piece of undeveloped land near my house that is surrounded by buildings and roads. I wish I could plant many different types and varieties of trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables on it. And do the same for an equal sized piece of land in the country that is surrounded only by more natural land.
I can guarantee that the city plot would have flowers, shrubs and trees that bloom and blossom sooner in the spring than the plot in the country.
That is the Urban Heat Island effect.
They're not talking about the difference between city flowers and rural flowers, they're talking about flowers at single locations. Leopold did nearly all of his work in the rural countryside, and flowering is occuring on average 24 days earlier.
That in my mind is significant. Is it all man-made? Of course not. But certainly an earlier flowering schedule deflates your idea of an actually cooler climate.
Evidently you miss the point of the word "island." The "Eastern US" can hardly be considered an island. I live in the country and there has most certainly been a change towards earlier bloom times. My first flowers bloomed about two weeks ago. The flowers that are blooming are out in the open. The flowers that are actually near my house have grown several inches tall; but, they are not yet near blooming (buds still in the early stages). It seems that in the past decade or so they start growing and blooming a little earlier every year. With snow now falling, and freezing temps expected, I now have to wonder which of my flowers will survive. For the past several years I have kept running out and trying to cover the plants more and more every time the temp drops (they keep growing above the mulch); the ones that didn't get covered enough failed to flower after the freeze killed the blooms. I think this year I'll just let them go and let things fall as they may.
Google Earth: 42°26'19.10"N, 71°20'24.18"W
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau.
Yes reading all those books and writing lengthy climate reports takes time away from discoveries. Does it warm the planet or warn of saving the planet?
Feeding the planet to the economy will kill it.
it's not just fine.... you may still see the same flowers, but they're the kind that have adapted to the earlier spring.... nature adapts, those that don't bloom anymore did not and fade away without you even noticing it. other more adaptable flowers, often derived from the older kinds, survive and you would not have a clue. they've been here millions of years, when humankind is gone courtesy of their own ignorance and arrogance they will remain and bloom again like nothing happens... good riddance.
From what my friend in Ohio tells me, it gonna suck for those flowers when the hard frost hits. They get one in early April these days thats pretty harsh on new buds.
Massachusetts photos from last "winter" show dandelions in January. Last week spiders were seen crossing a snow banks?