Credit: Toke Thomas Hoye, NERI
Flowers bloomed sooner. Insects swarmed earlier. Birds laid their eggs many weeks ahead.
But the flies were the champs.
Global warming has advanced the miracle of spring in the High Arctic of northeast Greenland as much as a month between 1996 and 2005. A team of Danish scientists found animals and plants near the Zackenberg Research Station bursting to life much earlier than expected — in some cases jump-starting the season of renewal by more than 30 days.
“In particular, flies are record holders by occurring up to 35 days earlier than usual,” the scientists wrote in a story about their results. “Such dramatic shifts due to warmer spring have not been observed before so consistently across very different species.”
Credit: Toke Thomas Hoye, NERI
The study, published in the June 21 issue of Current Biology, also suggested that you can’t blame the changes directly on the rise in June temperatures of about 2 ° F over a decade, the authors say.
In the harsh white world of the Far North tundra, it’s the earlier snow melt that has been driving these startling phenological shifts.
In Rapid advancement of spring in the High Arctic Danish scientist Toke Hoye and four co-authors reported the dramatic head-starts in several different species, with the growing season extending about three days per year over the decade.
Credit: Toke Thomas Hoye, NERI
“Flowering dates in six plant species, median emergence dates of twelve taxa of arthropods, and clutch initiation dates in three species of birds have advanced, in some cases by over 30 days during the last decade,” they write in the study. “The average advancement across all time series was 14.5 days per decade.”
The story about the research adds more:
“At this time we have already achieved an outstanding knowledge of not only the responses of plants and birds to climate changes in the High Arctic, but also how an entire ecosystem responds to the changes,” says Hoye, NERI and University of Copenhagen.
In comparison, similar studies have shown flowering dates for European plants two-three days earlier per decade, whereas for the Northern Hemisphere there has been observed advancement of approximately five days in several plant and animal species.
Still, not all species advanced at the same rate — differences that the scientists attributed to the wide variation in the microclimates in the Zackenberg Valley. This disconnect could spell problems for the ecological relationships among certain species.
“For example, successful egg laying by migrant birds is highly dependent on the abundant presence of emergent insects,” researcher Mads C. Forchhammer said in the story.
“As documented in the present study by Hoye and colleagues, the insects have responded in a much faster and massive way compared to birds. In the future, the birds might benefit from this extra supply of food early egg laying period of their short in breeding season in the High Arctic.”