Early flowers, new fish - late berries, few whales
A growing number of readers from around the globe have submitted to the Forum their observations of environmental shifts attributed to climate change. Highlights from some of these responses appear below.
The mean annual air temperature in our island has been increasing steadily over the past 50 years, with every one of the past 16 years being warmer than the average of the past 30 years, writes Andrew Casebow from the Beiliwick of Guernsey, , an island in the English Channel (Europe). This has resulted in very marked changes in the flowering dates of Guernsey's spring flowering wild flowers and changes in the behaviour of migrating birds. Many birds are nesting more than a week earlier and birds that used to be rare are thriving. For instance, the White Egret was a very rare visitor until recently but we now have two colonies of 54 birds which bred here for the first time in 2004. The sea is warming and surface temperatures are more than 1 degree Centigrade higher than they were 20 years ago. Plankton in the sea is moving northwards and with it sand eels and other species such as spider crabs. We are benefitting from a large increase in the abundance of some fish - sea bass and black bream - that are coming to our shores, whilst other species are in decline. Guernsey is famous for its Ormers (European Abalone - Haliotis tuberculata) as the island is at the northern end of their range, but they have now reached Alderney, an island some 23 miles (43 km) to the north of Guernsey and they are being successfully farmed off the coast of Cornwall in the UK, some 60 miles (110 km) to the north. Sea levels are also rising. On 10th March 2008 exceptionally low air pressure caused a much higher spring tide than had been forecast. This caused flooding on the sea front in St Peter Port and the tide overwhelmed sea defences and damaged large sections of sea wall in the west of the island. This is a foretaste of what climate change could bring as a normal occurrence in 50 years time.
This year our berries and fish are later than usual - at least one month behind the time when they usually are ready to eat, writes Kii'iljuus from the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada (North America). The coastline has suffered erosion along the eastern shores of our islands. This year the herring and whales did not show up in our inlet as they usually do. A few gray whales came into the inlet but left shortly after - in the past we could count on enjoying their visit for anywhere up to a couple of months.
Referring to the contribution from the Dominican Republic in the previous posting to the Forum, Basil Fernandez from Jamaica (Caribbean) cautions: We must be careful not to take cyclic weather patterns as climate change. Between 2001 and 2007 the Caribbean has been having above average rainfall with increased groundwater storage and stream flow. This is a cyclic pattern observed for over 100 years. If you speak to the older farmers in the country they will tell you that every 5 to 7 years the springs ‘burst out’. The emergence of these springs can be correlated to the above rainfall periods. In 2008 we may be starting another dry season cycle. The analysis of rainfall for the past 100 years indicates that Jamaica has been experiencing below average rainfall and since 1970 we are now above the 100 year average. One dry season and two storms is insufficient evidence to state that this is a result of climate change. While climate change is occurring, I do not think that the data exist in the Caribbean to emphatically state that climate change is the cause of our storms and dry season.
While science provides large-scale and quantitative data, local observations complement this with fine-grained interpretations rooted in long-term relationships with the natural environment. Send your observations on how climate change is affecting your environment and livelihoods.
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