Early Spring

good topic, but no time to listen today

Is this a joke? You must have really had to try hard to find another reason to proclaim environmental disaster. I guess you should have been living in Michigan for the past several months. We have suffered from an unusually long, seemingly never-ending winter.

Only a terribly unhappy and pesimistic person could find fault with a beautiful spring day.

Dear Friends,

I appreciated hearing your On Point broadcast focusing on Phenology (April 22nd). Please let your site visitors know about a fantastic free online Citizen Science Program for K-12 students and interested adults: Journey North: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/

Since 1994, Journey North participants in 10,000 classrooms and homes have been tracking seasonal changes by following animal migrations (and spring "green up") on real-time maps, uploading their own observations, and working with scientists and other students across North America. By digging into nearly 14 years worth of phenology and climate data, young people begin to see patterns of seasonal change and to note important interrelationships. The site is also rich with lessons, student-friendly reading materials, video clips, and photo observation activities. It's a gem. Eve

Here in the Bay Area in CA it is cold as the devil in the mornings and it has not kicked into spring yet by a long shot.

it seems counterintuitive, doesn't it. Like "that can't possibly be right, springtime arrived the same time it always has"
But not according to the climatologists and meteorologists. They actually have records of the last frost going back 100 years, and the data does not lie.

This may not seem disturbing when you are looking out your window in March or April at a beautiful spring day with the birds singing and the flowers blooming. But it represents a trend, and the end of the trend is not a happy place for living things. Oh no, I am not going to worry, of course the trend will reverse itself and everything will be fine. But there is no evidence that the trend is going to reverse itself. In fact, the scientists are telling us that the trend is accelerating.

I tried to find some actual data for Michigan (where I live) and I haven't been able to find it yet. I did find NOAA's "last frost probability" dates for Michigan though, and the dates of a last frost/freeze in the spring aren't any earlier than I remember them being as long as I've been gardening. We still have a 10% chance of a frost as late as Memorial Day, which is why I've never planted flowers before Memorial Day, and my mother and grandmother never planted before Memorial Day either, so that takes us back 100 years for southeast Michigan. I guess I'd like to see some actual historical data just to see if spring has come earlier by a day or two in the last century.

Good article. As a consequence of this creeping spring, the rats of Copenhagen have an extra breeding season, and we are now preparing for all sorts of diseases thought gone. Yesterday there was a news program about a Dane who has invented a new rat killing-trap for our and NYC's sewers. Ducks have stayed through the winter, and some even paired in the winter and had ducklings that of course did not survive. Other birds that should have migrated didn't, causing various problems in Africa where they should have come and been a part of various ecosystems there. I've seen a lot of migratory songbirds die in the winter, for there is no food for them. All sorts of insect pests from the Mediterranean region where they have natural checks and balances are coming to Denmark, which sits on the northernmost peninsula on continental Europe, without those natural predators. The life cycles of bees are getting messed up, affecting pollination of crops. Animals that naturally hibernate often cannot, and then don't have food sources to survive the brown winter. Well, the list goes on. Thanks for writing this.

LOL, what a joke. Our high each day for the last few weeks has not set a single record. Nature runs in cycles, why is that so hard for some people to grasp?

I notice that a number of the comments are focused on weather, rather than climate. We defined 'weather' as a short-term condition (e.g., what's happening outside today, or this week, or even this month). In contrast, 'climate' can be thought of as the long-term average of weather. For example, Alaska (where I was raised) can have cold weather almost anyday, and always has cold winters, but over the course of years, average temperatures have increased....winters are just not as cold as they used to be. Summers are indeed warmer than they used to be. In Michigan, it's the same situation...in fact, across most of the US, temperatures have risen, and this has affected plants, wildlife and humans. In Michigan, maple syrup is coming earlier, and hickory trees used for baseball bat production may be negatively affected by warming. Also, regular bird watchers report that the sandhill crane is arriving in the Upper Peninsula about a month earlier (in late April) compared to the late 1960s and early 1970s (when it arrived in late May). These are some of the manifestations of a warming climate. (Being from Alaska, I can also understand your desire for a little sunny 'weather' and the end of winter.)

right Jake! weather is what is happening this week. Climate is what happened over the past 20 years. The numbers do not lie. We should not ignore them just because it snowed this winter.
You can't talk to some people about this topic.

Of course, that is what "those people" will tell you about me- they think I am just as wrongheaded and ignorant as I think they are. But I do have the worldwide scientific community pretty much on my side.

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