FOXSYLVANIA

– – No, we’re not talking about the carnivorous plant in the musical Little Shop of Horrors, but let’s consider what’s happening to some like…(long pause)…the bloodroot, ahahahahaha!

This little herb, like a number of other plants including dogwoods and lilacs, is showing a life cycle that is sped up,  flowering earlier than usual or normal in many areas.   On average, spring is now coming several days earlier than it did a few decades ago, possibly as a result of global warming.   It’s easy to consider an early spring a good thing, but such may confuse plants and insects, making them shift their schedule.  If snow melts earlier, vegetation may suck up the water more quickly, leading to drier conditions for the ecosystem later on into the summer, and increasing the chances of wildfire.

Most climate scientists say that a warming climate would in turn be expected to affect the weather, but where, when, and the extent of such is hard to predict.  The fact that the oceans are warmer than they were about thirty years ago means that there’s on average about 4 per cent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans.  Since what goes up must come down, this could translate to more snowfall in winter and more extreme weather patterns generally…

This entry was posted on April 25, 2010 at 12:54 am and is filed under environmental, science, trends. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.