Global Warming

Global Warming New Study: Plants Flower five Days in Advance

Global warming is not a conqueror to kneel before – but a challenge to rise to. A challenge we must rise to. Another surprising report on global warming amazed scientists and world too. It is an unusual example of the effects of global climate change. Plants in Britain are flowering earlier in the year than [...]

Global warming is not a conqueror to kneel before – but a challenge to rise to. A challenge we must rise to.

Another surprising report on global warming amazed scientists and world too. It is an unusual example of the effects of global climate change.

Plants in Britain are flowering earlier in the year than at any time in the last two-and-a-half centuries, a global warming new study shows.

Published in the journal Proceedings B, it revealed that for every one degrees Celsius increase in temperature, plants flower five days in advance. The data was compiled using information gathered by domestic gardeners over the last 250 years.

More than 400 species of plant were examined, allowing researchers to estimate when plants will flower in the future as global warming causes temperatures to rise. The records, that go back to 1753, were divided into 25 year periods in order to compare the average flowering time as the weather changed from year to year. More than 400 species were recorded, from spring blooms like daffodils to summer plants like ivy.

The study of how plants react to the climate, known as “phenology“, is important because of the knock-on effect for other species. For example pollinators such as bees and butterflies may struggle if flowers bloom early and are over quickly, threatening animals further up the food chain and even humans.

Researchers hope the results will help to work out a “global index” showing how many days earlier plants will flower around the world as the temperature warms, so it is possible to protect certain species.

It is hard to make climate change real for people – they see a winter like this and do not believe it. This makes it very real for people. The natural world is our canary in the cage. It does show what is happening and the fact that plants flower five days earlier for every 1C of temperature rise and the fact that the last 25 years was earlier than any other period since 1753 should tell people a great deal.