Climate Change Is Warping The Seasons!”
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
The seasons aren’t what they used to be.
People who live in Earth’s middle latitudes are accustomed to a spring, summer, autumn and winter. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you may have noticed plants flowering earlier than usual. It’s not your imagination: a 2022 study revealed that spring blooms are arriving a month sooner in the UK due to climate change.
Temperature tells many plants when to start growing in the spring. Ashton says it isn’t clear how plants sense this, but again, pigments in their cells probably play a role.
“[Plants] sense the days getting warmer and alter their spring development in a manner akin to humans feeling warmth on their skin and so stepping out with fewer layers of clothing,” he says.
That’s where climate change has complicated things: rising air temperatures have yielded shorter, milder winters. Since 1986, plants in the UK now greet spring 26 days earlier, on average.
This relatively rapid shift has severed an arrangement plants and animals have negotiated over thousands of years.
“Insects that are used to feasting on April-flowering plants may find themselves arriving a month late if warmer temperatures mean that the plants now flower in March,” say Chris Wyver and Laura Reeves, PhD candidates who study pollination and climate change at the University of Reading.
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-warping-the-seasons-221893
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This sort of nonsense has been debunked plenty of times before, yet so-called experts still repeat it.
So let’s start with the first obvious lie- “has severed an arrangement plants and animals have negotiated over thousands of years.”
The idea that Britain’s climate has remained unaltered for thousands of years until the last three decades is palpably absurd. There is ample evidence that the Little Ice Age was a much colder time, but also plenty of evidence of much warmer periods before, interspersed with cold ones. Maybe Wyver and Reeves should spend a bit of time reading the likes of HH Lamb.
Somehow the birds and the bees managed to survive all of these climatic changes!
But much more important are the massive swings in temperature from year to year, at times as much as five degrees. These swings far outweigh the almost imperceptible amount of warming in the last three decades:
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There is not, and has never been, such a thing as a “normal spring”. And nature certainly does not do averages. Instead it is highly adaptable to changes in weather, on an annual or even day-to-day basis.
And as HH Lamb knew, changes in growing seasons are nothing new. The study highlighted by The Conversation looks at changes since 1986. But that marked the end of a much colder period as far as springs were concerned in England. According to Lamb, the onset of spring between 1963 and 1980 arrived 16 days later than it had done between 1920 and 1950.
HH Lamb: Climate, History and The Modern World”
The more things change, the more, it seems, they stay the same!
Comments are closed.
I think the bias is already baked in from anyone studying ‘pollination and climate change’.
I’ve not noticed any significant changes in when snowdrops start to appear and when they start to flower. It seems to vary randomly from year to year. It’s the same with the next plants to flower, celandines and primroses.
I’m not sure what PhD students can study, apart from looking at long term historical records, which, as you say, they don’t seem to have done.
I’m always amused by the use of snowdrops to illustrate this nonsense – I was taught that snowdrop development is governed by day length not temperature
https://www.gardenia.net/guide/when-do-snowdrops-galanthus-flower
“Remarkably resilient, they even bloom beneath a blanket of snow if they have to”
I guess the clue is in the name!
I recall from plant ecology lectures, back in the 1970s, that natural fluctuations in temperature – even within the same season – meant it would be a poor indicator of ‘spring’ for plants, so they surely relied on several variables, especially consistent changes in day length, to signal regrowth etc. I could understand how a trend to warmer conditions early in the year could lead to a somewhat earlier start to the growing season, but day length would surely be more of a limiting factor. Moreover, any animals reliant on plant emergence in Spring would surely be attuned by evolution to the same signals as the plants and react to any temporal changes in the same way – if not, they presumably would have died out during the later onset of Spring that HH Lamb describes. Happy for other readers with greater (and more up to date!) knowledge to correct me on this!
The commenters here are better ‘scientific thinkers’ than two ideologically biased graduate students.
Fraud.
say Chris Wyver and Laura Reeves, PhD candidates
They have not earned the PhD title. It is fraud to use it with their names.
Medical students are not “doctor candidates.”
An appeal to authority with fraudulent exaggeration of authority.
Insects that are used to feasting on April-flowering plants may find themselves arriving a month late if warmer temperatures mean that the plants now flower in March
It’s amazing that plants in England bloom in March due to temperature, but British insects aren’t affected by same.
So if this is part of their PhD thesis, I guess that they will be failed for lack of diligence.
https://www.gardenia.net/guide/when-do-snowdrops-galanthus-flower
So there are 20 different species of Snowdrops and now several hundred hybrids. Their overall flowering season in the UK is now from as early as October through to May dependent on species/hybrid.
So sweet FA to do with climate and all about specialist breeding.
Can I have my PhD please?
Replace “sweet FA” with “everything” and “all about” with “nothing to do with” and it’s a shoe in. What goes before doesn’t matter it’s the conclusion that counts.
Temperature reading of 5º in Falkirk. Feeling like -1. March, to’ther false spring.
My snow drops are out, but not my daffs, the primroses are thinking about it and the bluebell wood is still green,all looks a bit normal to me.
Just conducted an in depth study of the appearance of said flowers in my woods from my photo library going back to 2003, and…..
its slightly different each spring
Snowdrops,first, early to mid march, Primroses late march Bluebells mid april .No Daff pictures
My proffessional conclusion is…… it’s different every year.
Yes, plenty of snowdrops here in Cumbria in March too, though in fairness we do have daffodils in flower (as usual in March).
My first snowdrops were out in mid February, the first daffodils and crocus’s third week. My flowering plum tree has been out all Feb. Certainly very early this year, I suppose due to weather conditions this winter. Nothing to do with climate however.
You have just reminded me that one of my rhododendrons is in flower at pesent.
The Conversation is a propagandist rag. Here they are claiming that (man-made) global warming causes more intense cold spells, via stratospheric polar vortex events: https://theconversation.com/global-warming-may-be-behind-an-increase-in-the-frequency-and-intensity-of-cold-spells-223153.
Could plants be starting up sooner because of the increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere I wonder?
Commercial greenhouses maintain CO2 levels around 600ppm to 1 000ppm which quickens seed/seedling growth, and causes plants to grow more rapidly, more healthy, stronger and requiring less water and fertiliser.
Speaking from personal experience, when snowdrops, daffodils and crocus first appear has always varied year to year… like Easter – some years Easter is early, some years it is late, but it is never on time. Must be due to climate change.
Yes. I pay particular attention to my crocus, which vary up to two weeks.
Their theory is that if I stop driving my GT350R, the croci will come up later, which will make the world a better place, and children will sleep better.
Oh thats a thought, that must also apply to my supercharged Range Rover then that I rarely use thus halping to save the planet.
There are numerous references in English literature to variations in the seasons, in the numbers a various beasties knocking about and so forth. Zero evidence in the last 75 years of anything even mildly remarkable.
i suggest these virtue signalling young twerps dial back on the wacky baccy. Better to keep your own council and have folk suspect you are a nitwit, rather than to come out with tendentious twaddle and prove it beyond doubt.
The best known flowering in the US is DC’s cherry blossoms.
The average peak bloom date, which is when 70% of the flowers of the cherry blossom trees are open, is around April 4. In the past, peak bloom has occurred as early as March 15 and as late as April 18.
Peak bloom this year is expected between March 23-26. Almost two weeks before average, but a week later than earliest.
https://s.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/eGxNjZlbYj8BkJAzSdfuBw–~C/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2ZpPWZpbGw7aD0xNTA7dz0xNjA-/https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.oGAh8SrquuHWZd1_QRXrqgHaHa&w=160&h=160&c=8&rs=1&qlt=80&pid=3.1
Meanwhile Washington State has had its coldest early-March:
Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Coldest Early March in a Generation, Large Improvement in Regional Snowpack
I guess the word “global” doesn’t mean what I thought. “Weather” still keeps on doing its thing.
If Nature has the plants starting earlier in ANY year, I’m pretty sure Nature has the Insects starting earlier as well. NATURALLY!
The first flying insects I see in the year are bumble bees. My first sighting of them this year has been early February, feeding on early Mahonia flowers.
MY mistake, just seen a solitary Daffodill.
The Conversation. Enough said. Bin. Move on.
Observation from my own garden (Hampshire) has been that daffodils, were coming into flower in late December in some years around the millennium. But in the past 10 years rarely do I see even the most sheltered daffs until mid to late January. I’ve paid less attention to snowdrops so can’t comment on them.
Some practical observations. We have a camelia now in full flower (1st week April)- two years ago it flowered at New Year, which it often does. Another two camelia species have almost given up trying to flower this year, again usually Christmas – New Year (possible been too cold & wet but nothing extraordinary).
The kale & perpetual spinach stood still from November to February, no pickings at all, but both suddenly in ample leaf.
Plums & apple buds scarcely started to swell. Yet the lawn (a ryegrass mix) has not stopped growing all winter. Bumblebees are around but they must be over-wintered late adults from last year judging by their large size.
I have been a keen smallholder for over 40 years, nothing unusual here. Just the inevitable variability of one year to another; currently totally impossible to predict next winter’s winners & losers.
So we are in a warm during this interglacial. So what? Be happy weirdo doom cultist activists that you are alive during a time of plenty because I assure you the alternative you yearn for is not fun!
AGAIN effect is no evidence for cause but then why is surprised by the level of critical thinking which goes into arts graduate activism.