Flowering times and global warming
We have all seen flowers appearing earlier than ever - daffodils in December, magnolia in February - but now the extent of the change has been revealed by a new study.
The research, carried out by a team at Cambridge University, found that plants in the UK are flowering as much as a month earlier than just 70 years ago.
Its long been known that temperatures in urban areas are higher than the surrounding area due to more buildings, cars and people etc, something called the urban heat island effect. But these changes are more than can be expected from urbanisation – global warming is contributing too and the result is a worryingly rapid change in our climate, especially in the early months of the year.
The study looked at data going back as far as 1753, the earliest of which was gathered by naturalists who recorded all sorts of observations, including the date at which leaves and flowers opened (phenology) – data which has proved so useful for this study.
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