Scary Spring: Earlier Blooms Are a Sign of Climate Change
The stirrings of springtime show nature awakening. Coaxed by warming air and stronger sunlight, flowers unfurl on cherry trees and eager green buds burst forth from horse chestnuts. A little hope returns, as bees buzz and birds build nests. This year, it’s been happening a little earlier — and the reason isn’t hard to find.
In Washington DC, the city’s famous cherry trees — the originals a gift from Japan in 1912 — reached peak blossom on March 21, rather earlier than a century ago. In Kyoto, where these trees’ cousins live, records show the first blooms advancing by a week over the past century, alongside a temperature increase of more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Planetary warming is driving a similar trend globally, shifting the timings of not only the first leaves and flowers, but bird migrations and egg-hatchings. These changes have accelerated in the past 20 years.
We often think of global warming as something made evident only through difficult scientific measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels or average sea-surface temperatures. But signs of warming are all around us in distortions of the historical rhythms of the natural world, adding ominous overtones to the joyous springtime greenery. All these shifts reflect nature under increasing pressure — and hold unpredictable consequences for our well-being and the resilience of global ecosystems in coming decades.
The study of the timing of important biological events is known as “phenology,” and much of what we know about it comes from painstaking observations made over centuries. The longest time series recorded anywhere is for the cherry trees in Kyoto; remarkably, it goes all the way back to the year 812. This data, and a variety of other records — including data in the
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