Climate Change Could Bring Early Springs to US

Allstadt and his fellow researchers used climate models to determine that spring is likely to arrive an average of 22 days earlier by 2100.

While those who are tired of winter may welcome such news, scientists say the shift will also have long-reaching impacts on the growing season of plants and the animals that depend upon them.

As the scientists detailed in their latest paper, published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters, higher temperatures will translate to an earlier spring – as many as three weeks earlier by the end of the century.

Allstadt and his colleagues also predict a shift in the incidence of false springs, which occur when the air temperature drops below freezing after spring plant growth has already commenced.

The sudden shift on seasons would cause a severe imbalance on ecosystems, reported Daily Mail United Kingdom, as food will eventually become scarce for animals that rely on it. In addition, researchers found that seasonal shifts are particularly more aggressive in the Pacific Northwest and other mountainous areas in the western U.S.

“But long distance migratory birds, for example, time their migration based on day length in their winter range”.

“They may arrive in their breeding ground to find that the plant resources that they require are already gone”, he said.

“This is important as false springs can damage plant production cycles in natural and agricultural systems” explains Andrew Allstadt, an author of the study. They have freely provided much of their data on their website.

The report found the change in the start of spring varied by as many as 26 days, meaning parts of the country including North Carolina lost nearly an entire month of winter.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have predicted that spring season may have a permanent early onset due to climate change.

In the future the team plans to make predictions on the future of extreme weather events such as droughts and heat waves, and how these changes will effect wildlife. “We are particularly interested in how these affect populations in wildlife refuges”.