This is the first episode of Nature Quest, a monthly Short Wave segment that answers listener questions about your local environment. Every month, we'll be bringing you a question from a fellow listener who is curious about how nature is changing – how to pay attention to the land around us – and make every day Earth Day.
Shai Tsur lives in Oakland, California. He's used to seeing flowers bloom in his neighborhood: pear trees, plum trees, California poppies. But not in January.
This past winter was warmer than usual, Tsur says. "The 70 degree weather in December and January was starting to happen here."
Coupled with the early blooms, the weather has him worried about the local trees and flowers. Why is their timing off this year? Is it related to climate change?
As it turns out, there's a whole field devoted to studying the timing of biological events and how it might be shifting. It's called phenology.
"The migration times of birds, when butterflies start flying in the spring, when plants flower, when trees leaf out ... these are all part of phenology," says Richard Primack, a professor of plant ecology at Boston University. In his lab, scientists study the cycles of plant budding and flowering, and how those cycles have changed over time.
"Plants are flowering earlier, trees are leafing out earlier," he says. "And the reason that they're flowering earlier [is] because it's warmer."
These changes aren't just limited to Boston, where Primack lives. They're happening across the country ... and across the world.
"Here in the Northwest, we've seen a definite trend towards warmer and drier summers," says Chris Daly, director of the PRISM spatial climate analysis group at Oregon State University. "We already get very little precipitation in July and August, but even that's dwindling."
PRISM publishes regular climate normals. These are publicly accessible maps that track weather conditions and precipitation levels around the country, average them out and then show how those averages have shifted over time. Comparing those climate normals over time, it's clear that temperatures are rising across the United States.
Local California experts told Short Wave that this year in particular, a combination of wet weather and warm temperatures caused local plants to bloom much earlier than usual.
For Tsur and his neighbors, gardening guides like the University of California Davis's Climate Ready Toolkit might be helpful. They list local drought tolerant and climate resilient plants that may hold up better to unpredictable seasonal shifts.
If you're interested in going on a local nature quest – and contributing to the work of scientists like Richard Primack and Chris Daly – you can! Here's some citizen science networks that are accepting participants from around the country:
- The USA National Phenology Network - Helps everyday observers to collect data that's used by researchers, forest managers, and local phenologists. You can download their app, Nature's Notebook, and become an observer here.
- iNaturalist - A community science app that shares observations with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other scientific databases. For a list of current projects, check out this page.
- The National Weather Service's Cooperative Observing Program - observers log meteorological data, usually consisting of daily maximum and minimum temperatures, snowfall, and 24-hour precipitation totals. Instructions and forms are available here.
- CoCoRaHS (the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network) - a volunteer network measuring precipitation levels. You can join by filling out the form here.
Got a question about changes in your local environment? Send a voice memo to shortwave@npr.org with your name, where you live and your question. We might make it into our next Nature Quest episode!
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This episode was produced and reported by Hannah Chinn, edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. Becky Brown was the audio engineer.
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