Ask the birds and the bees – and the frogs and the snakes. It is not only that last year’s temperature was four tenths of a degree higher than the year before, but that the increase is an average – some really warm stretches alternating with days of true winter weather. Creatures basking in the sun one day may be at risk of temperatures suddenly plunging twenty-four hours later.

Photo: University of Georgia

On the coast of Georgia, temperatures were in the 70s 25 times in December and January. For cold-blooded creatures like   canebrake rattlesnakes, unseasonable warmth disrupted their winter rest and lured them out of their holes. According to Kimberly Andrews, an affiliate of the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, a snake taking a January sun bath is expending energy he would normally save for spring and summer. “If predator reptiles start to change their habits,” Andrews says, “the entire ecosystem could see shifts in the competitive balance between predator and prey.”

Photo: National Zoo

Early sitings of migratory birds might cheer the winter-weary, but warmer temperatures may be forcing some species to leave their winter habitat before adequate food sources emerge at their destinations. A premature arrival could mean the avian travelers face nutritional shortages as they start to nest. That timing of migrations is shifting is more than casual observation and hearsay; a paperstudying records kept over the past century determined that the spring arrival dates of ruby-throated hummingbirds have advanced by as many as 18 days.

Indisputably, ecosystem relationships are dynamic and complex. Various species respond differently to stimuli; some species can adjust to earlier springtime warming by emerging sooner while other species rely on different cues to initiate seasonal behavior. A recent report published in the journal Ecology posits that an increase in a species’ abundance and spatial expansion relates to its ability “track” climate change. Although the author’s research focused on flora, a like phenomenon may occur among populations of hibernating mammals.

Photo: Ducks Unlimited

A paper published in Global Change Biology examined the relationships among climate change, phenology and populations of lesser snow geese in a subarctic region. Looking at body development and juvenile survival rates, the researchers found that warmer-than-average seasons degraded gosling body condition and reduced first-year survival rates, that phenological shifts in both goose and plant communities could disrupt nutritional availability, and that a warming climate could be detrimental to snow goose populations in the long run.

Understanding how plants and animals respond to later winters and earlier springs will help natural resource managers set goals and develop strategies. As a paper from the National Wildlife Federation states, “Determining which resources are most vulnerable enables managers to better set priorities for conservation action, while understanding why they are vulnerable provides a basis for developing appropriate management and conservation responses.”

Sure seems like apple trees were blooming this time last year, or is that just a failure of memory? Was last year normal, or is this year? Are we experiencing customary annual fluctuations, or a trend toward a different climate norm?

In order to answer such questions the National Phenology Network relies on volunteers across the continent reporting their observations. Set up under the aegis of the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Science Foundation, the network aims to develop a technical daybook of seasonal changes. Beyond satisfying the simply curious and the scientifically minded, such data is useful in agricultural forecasting, wildlife management and health advisories.

The more widespread the observation points and thorough the data collection, the more valuable the collected data will be. Therefore there is an ongoing need to enlist volunteers willing to do local observation, species inventory and project monitoring. The network provides broad support for individuals, groups and organizations interested in recording what’s happening to local plant and animal populations, either seasonally or on a long-term basis.

The network attracts even those who never set a foot outdoors. People can delve into data on the network’s web site and get answers about when those apple trees flowered in past years. Interactive tools make it easy to select sites, map species, track present and historic phenology and overlay temperature and precipitation information. Reports available for downloading summarize regional observations, booklets describe monitoring methodologies and a bibliography has links to papers examining various aspects of phenology and climate change.

That this story was deemed worthy of an article in the Wall Street Journal might harbinger another kind of change: could mainstream media’s interest in and coverage of climate issues be warming up?

The planet’s average temperature rose by a degree, compared to the mid-20^th century baseline, to 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Although weather patterns cause yearly fluctuations, the trend is markedly toward rising temperatures, with each decade warmer, on average, than the one preceding it. The temperature increase parallels the increase in concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

The analysis of the year’s global temperature records was released by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Focusing on U.S. records, NOAA announced that 2012 was the warmest year documented in the continental U.S., a full degree Fahrenheit warmer than the previous warmest year, in 1998, and 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20^th century average. Widespread drought accompanied the heat, with overall precipitation 2.57 inches below the 20^th century average, earning the year a ranking as the 15^th driest on record.

As startling as comparing averages is, local weather on any given day is what we experience. Every state among the lower 48 had above-average annual temperatures in 2012; 19 states experienced record high temperatures, and in 47 out of the 48 states there was some place that was hotter than ever before. GISS director James E. Hansen observes that “…the frequency of unusually warm extremes is increasing. It is the extremes that have the most impact on people and other life on the planet.”

Only 2011 brought more billion-dollar natural disasters to the U.S. than did 2012.

• 2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States, a full one degree Fahrenheit hotter than the previous record and 3.2 degrees F hotter than the 20^th century average. The fourth warmest winter was followed by a record-breaking warm spring, the second-warmest summer and an unusually warm autumn.
• A year-long drought struck 22 states, enveloping more than half the continental land mass. Crops withered in the nation’s breadbasket and the effects of scant precipitation were widespread, from threatening barge traffic on the Mississippi River to an unusual December wildfire in the snowless Colorado mountains. At the end of the year more than 62 percent of the continental U.S. remained in the pernicious grip of drought, causing scientists to predict widespread drought conditions would persist into the first quarter of the new year.
• Summer wildfires burned more than 9.2 million acres, more than twice as much as the average 40 years ago. The third smallest snow pack on record led to an early and long season of dry conditions.
• Two hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. made the billion-dollar disaster list: slow-moving Isaac flooded Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, while superstorm Sandy caused damage in 14 states up the Atlantic seaboard.  Flooding in New York and New Jersey was cited by some as a harbinger of likely future disasters caused by rising sea levels.
• Between late April and early July, severe weather comprising high winds, thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail lashed eight regions in the U.S., from the Southwest, over the Rockies, across the Plains, into the Southern Plains, through the Midwest and the Ohio Valley, and into the Northeast.
• In March and April, three tornado outbreaks spawning scores of tornadoes ravaged communities in the Midwest (Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa); Texas; and the Ohio Valley and Southeast (Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia).

Thirty-eight percent of Americans over 16 years of age hunted, fished, or participated in some kind of wildlife-related activity in 2011, according to the quinquennial national survey issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In pursuit of their interests, these sportsmen and women spent $145 billion, or one dollar out of every hundred dollars of goods and services produced in the U.S.

Compared to the prior national survey, released in 2006, there was a 9 percent increase in hunting, with the biggest gains seen among migratory bird hunters. Fishing participation increased by 11 percent. Numbers of wildlife-watchers stayed steady.

The economic impact of outdoor sports and recreation is widespread, with money spent on equipment, travel and lodging, licenses and fees, membership dues and contributions, land leasing and ownership, and plantings for hunting.  From local guides and restaurant workers to airlines and national manufacturers, numerous sectors of the economy benefit from Americans’ enthusiasm to enjoy the outdoors and connect with the natural world.

Wildlife-associated recreation also results in significant financial support for conservation. A report from the American Sportsfishing Organization points out that anglers’ purchase of license fees and payment of excise taxes on tack and on motorboat fuel fund state fish and wildlife agency projects that improve water quality and support fisheries’ and habitat conservation, contributing to the nation’s overall environmental health.

There were fewer pheasants in the field this past hunting season, according to a report from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and fewer pheasant hunters as well. Weather over the past five years – winters of heavy snowfall followed by wet nesting seasons – is cited as the primary cause of falling numbers of pheasants in Iowa, Minnesota and North and South Dakota.

Whether or not these events of unusual precipitation can be blamed on it, climate change could be hammering pheasants with a double whammy: Inclement weather is coupled with the stress of increasing habitat loss as Midwestern farmers convert brushy margins of their fields to grow corn for biofuels. The amount of land in the Agriculture Department’s Conservation Reserve Program has declined by more than seven million acres, or by nearly 20 percent of its peak enrollment in 2007.

For farmers it is often a question of economics. Rising crop prices and land values outstrip the financial incentive the government offers to create wildlife habitat. But the dwindling number of hunters has its own economic impact on local economies; in Iowa, pheasant hunters spent 70 percent less in 2010 than they did in 1997, a decline felt by the small-town hotels, cafes and shops that out-of-state hunters tend to patronize.

A warming world is reducing global biodiversity and threatening the provision of ecosystem services that people depend on, say scientists contributing to the report Technical Input to the 2013 National Climate Assessment.

Forest die-offs such as occurred in these New Mexico pinon pines between October 2002 and May 2004 are projected to become more frequent. Photo: USGS

A self-reinforcing feedback loop, whereby ice melt increases seawater absorption of sunlight that causes more ice melt, contributed to arctic ice extent and volume reaching record lows  in 2012.  Of further concern, the existing ice is both thinner and younger than previous ice layers, and is more prone to melting.

The transformation to large, ice-free expanses in the region has cascading ecological effects, according to the latest annual Arctic report card  issued by NOAA. The changing physical landscape endangers the feeding and reproduction [habits] of ice-dependent species such as polar bears, seals, walruses and many kinds of birds. Ponds of melted water allow penetrating sunlight to stimulate massive, under-ice phytoplankton blooms  that could be altering the type, timing, location and productivity of the base of the marine food web.

In most of the Arctic, growing seasons above ground are changing in response to higher temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns. In some places the season is shrinking, due to rising temperatures drying the soils. But in other places the season has expanded by as much as three weeks.  The increased biomass largely comprises shrubs and forbs, with fewer mosses and lichens. The change in the tundra’s vegetative composition combines with climate-change-induced thunderstorms to promote fire activity.

Underneath the tundra, there is a general trend of permafrost warming over the past 30 years, although there is great variability due to factors such as location, geological composition, surface air temperature and active layer depth. In 2012, record high temperatures of permafrost  measured at a depth of 20 meters were widespread across northern Alaska.

Observations of Greenland brought further evidence of a warming planet. The Greenland Ice Sheet continued to darken, absorbing more sunlight and accelerating melting. Nearly all of the ice sheet surface melted to some extent in July 2012. Scientists cite unusually high summer temperatures and anomalous atmospheric circulation patterns as additional causes of the melt.

Temperatures in 2012 were generally in keeping with temperatures recorded in the Arctic over the past decade. However, the decadal average demonstrates “Arctic amplification,” with Arctic temperatures rising more than twice as much as temperatures at lower latitudes. Temperature combines with other climate and ecosystem indicators pointing to system-wide changes in the Arctic environment.

But what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic: scientists track the five-year reduction in the extent of snow cover in Eurasia and North America, including areas outside the polar region, to a warmer Arctic. Both temperature and precipitation influence the onset and accumulation of snow cover and directly affect numerous components of the Arctic environment, including the timing and energy of spring run-off, the length of the growing season, wildlife population dynamics and soils’ thermal conditions.

Following a summer when corn withered in Midwestern fields and the cost of feeding livestock forced culling of herds, at the end of November more than half the continental U.S. remained gripped in drought. Overall the percentage of the country experiencing moderate to exceptional drought conditions increased slightly from October’s measure, from 60.2 to 62.7 percent, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor report. Preliminary reports for December show some overall improvement in conditions nationwide.

Floods and drought are extreme weather events predicted to become more frequent under continuing climate-change conditions. But rainfall or lack thereof are but two of the climate-induced threats to the nation’s food supply. For example, rising seas will inundate coastal marine nurseries and low-lying agricultural areas. Saltwater infiltration will damage freshwater irrigation systems and contaminate drinking water. Disease-carrying insects and other pests may become more problematic as they survive warmer winters and expand their ranges northward. Increased atmospheric carbon can reduce the nutritional content of vegetation, depressing food quality even when plants survive.

The effects of flood and drought on wildlife are little studied. Adapted over eons to relatively constant climatic conditions, creatures of the wild depend on reliable sources of clean water and nutritious food as much as humans do, but with far more limited resources to acquire them when their immediate environment degrades. Further, the capability of animals to adapt to phenological changes – the early emergence of insects or vegetation offering peak nutrition, for example – is uncertain. When short days are warmer, encouraging an early flush of vegetation, animals with reproductive cycles synchronized to lengthening hours of daylight may be nursing their offspring on a diet of sub-optimal food.

Hurricane Sandy’s 1,000-mile reach. Photo:NOAA

Hurricane Sandy was “weather on steroids,” according to a quote in Bloomberg Businessweek. As Mark Fischetti of Scientific American wrote, “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.”

Additionally, cold Canadian air that collided with the storm, increasing its energy and geographic reach, was pushed south from the Arctic by an atmospheric pattern known as a blocking high. In a study published June in Oceanography, scientists describe how melting Arctic ice, linked to global warming, contribute to this atmospheric pattern.

While residents along New York and New Jersey shorelines dry out clothing and tear out flood-damaged sheetrock, the storm’s effects on denizens of the watery deep may take years to evaluate. Although recent hurricane damage to Gulf Coast barrier islands, oyster beds, sea-grass beds and coastal marshes is well documented, assessments of how marine habitat suffered under Sandy has just begun. However, the storm is undoubtedly yet another insult to an environment already degraded by overfishing, coastal pollution and sea-water acidification. As the National Geographic NewsWatch Ocean Views states, “… Climate change is increasing the degree of difficulty fishermen and regulators face in rebuilding depleted fish stocks … We can’t say climate change has prevented any one species from rebuilding, but climate change sure made it harder and take a lot longer.”

Reports of range shifts among fisheries have been documented for years. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center published a study in 2009 showing that species upon which New England’s fishing industry traditionally depends, including Atlantic cod, haddock and hake, were migrating northward or into greater depths in search of colder water. Commercial lobstering is now rare in southern New England. And amid calls for re-establishing oyster beds as a way to reduce the destructive wave action of advancing storms, Sandy indisputably dealt a blow to the region’s shellfisheries.