Europe's springtime moves

Most of the alarming data about temperature rises as a result of likely climate change have come from high latitudes and altitudes. There appears growing evidence that glaciers and ice sheets are melting rapidly. The latest evidence comes from comparisons of pictures in the Andes reported last month which show that the Upsala glacier in Argentina has melted substantially, creating a lake where only ice previously occurred. But evidence of climate change at more temperate and lower latitudes has been more difficult to determine from the inter-annual variations. So a new meta-analysis providing evidence that spring is arriving earlier across parts of Europe than it did 30 years ago, recently published in Global Change Biology, has attracted interest. Researchers from 17 countries have collaborated in the world's largest phenology study, which records the changes in natural annual events, such as the flowering of plants, and now have real evidence that climate change is affecting the seasons. Evidence of climate change at high latitudes and altitudes can be dramatic but in other regions the picture is less clear. A new study of plants across Europe suggests spring is arriving earlier in many regions. Led by Annette Menzel from the Technical University Munich and Tim Sparks at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, the team has discovered that spring arrives an average of 6–8 days earlier than it did in the past. And in countries where rapid increases in temperature have occurred, that figure is almost doubled. The researchers examined more than 125,000 datasets to find out what changes were occurring across Europe, and when. Their research also reveals a definite contrast with spring arriving later in countries such as Slovakia, which have seen recent decreases in spring temperatures. The pattern was most evident as an advance in spring but the warmer Blooming early: Many springtime flowers in Europe are appearing earlier according to new research. Bluebells flower in woodland in southeast England.