More jack pines are cut as weather limits access to other species. Graphic: dnr.wi.gov

Winter warming is reducing lumberjack access to New England forests, declare loggers who have worked outdoors in upstate New York for decades. Late freeze dates and early thaws are shortening the harvest season and lengthening the seasons of mud, during which forests become inaccessible. Unreliable winter roads reduce the number of work days for loggers and increase costs as outfits build gravel roads to ensure access to operations. Converting skidders to swamp “balloon” tires to ply the mud  is possible, but poses risks to the environment as knubby tires on heavy equipment can tear up fragile soils and cause silting in streams

The loggers’ observations, related in a story first published in The Daily Climate, are corroborated by a study of seven Wisconsin counties that correlated records of public-land harvests to temperatures over the past 60 years . The  study determined that frozen-ground conditions have declined by two to four weeks since 1949. Weather also influences the kind of tree cut: as winter conditions become more variable, Wisconsin loggers are favoring cutting timber grown on sandy, well-drained soils.

Just released, the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy is the first nationwide plan to help decision makers address the impacts of climate change on the nation’s natural resources and the people and economies that depend on them.

The strategy identifies the major impacts that climate change is expected to have on natural resources:

• changes in species distributions and migration patterns
• spread of wildlife diseases and invasive species
  

  The strategy presents guidelines for natural resource managers assisting wildlife in adapting to climate change. Photo: National Park Service

• inundation of coastal habitats with rising sea levels
• changing productivity of coastal oceans
• changes in freshwater availability

To safeguard natural resources, reduce future damages, and take advantage of beneficial opportunities in a changing climate, the strategy recommends seven actions:

1.  Conserve and connect habitat

2.  Manage species and habitats

3.  Enhance management capacity

4.  Support adaptive management

5.  Increase knowledge and information

6.  Increase awareness and motivate action

7.  Reduce non-climate stressors

With the strategy’s goal of assisting fish, wildlife, plants and related ecological processes become more resilient, adapt to, and survive the impacts of climate change, governmental agencies and their conservation partners may use it to focus planning, coordinate efforts and foster cooperation.

Released by the Obama administration, the strategy is the result of a call in 2010 by the U.S. Congress to develop a plan to assist the nation’s natural resources adapt to climate change. It was produced by a partnership of federal, state and tribal fish and wildlife conservation agencies.

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?

Warm and wet described conditions across most of the contiguous U.S. during the winter season, December 2012-February 2013.

A wet winter diminishes drought’s reach

According to NOAA scientists, this was the 20th warmest winter on record, with the average temperature 1.9°F above the 20th century average.  

Total winter precipitation across the contiguous United States averaged 0.63 inches above the 20th century average. During February, several winter storms alleviated drought conditions across the Southeast and Midwest. Lower precipitation levels across the Central Plains and the Mountain West did little to mitigate the drought.

Winter season climate highlights

Precipitation totals, December-February

Temperature in the contiguous U.S.: Winter was warmer than average for all states east of the Rockies. In three states – Florida, Delaware and Vermont – this winter was among the ten warmest on record.
However, the Southwest was cooler than average while the Northwest reported near-average winter temperatures.

Precipitation in the contiguous U.S.: Winter brought above-average precipitation for most states east of the Rockies. In many states in the Great Lakes region and Gulf Coast – Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia – this winter was among the ten wettest on record. However, states on the West Coast and in the Northern Plains and Rockies received below-average precipitation, even though the Rutgers Global Snow Lab reported the 15^th largest overall seasonal snow cover since the start of record-keeping in 1966.

Temperature and precipitation in Alaska: Winter was both warmer and wetter than average. The statewide average temperature registered 2.0°F above average, making this three-month period the 27^th warmest  in the 95-year record. Winter was the 17^th wettest on record, with precipitation at more than 30 percent above average.

Looking forward: NOAA’s three-month spring outlook

Current conditions of snowpack, drought, soil moisture, stream flow, precipitation, Pacific Ocean temperatures and climate forecast modeling contribute to formulating NOAA’s spring climate predictions.

Above-average temperatures are likely to continue throughout the contiguous U.S.. There is no drought relief in sight for Texas, the Southwest and the Great Plains, and Florida joins this list of regions expecting below-average precipitation during the spring season.

Across the country other states should prepare for river floods worse than last year. North Dakota was singled out as being at most risk of floods.

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.”

Native brook trout. Photo, USDA Forest Service

Testing the assumption that stream temperatures rise in correspondence with air temperatures, researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey delivered good news for brook trout in the Appalachian region.  Because these native trout do not thrive in waters warmer than 70 degrees, forecasts for the trout’s survival in all but the highest headwaters looked grim.  Then scientists from the two agencies started calculating  additional factors affecting stream temperature, such as slope aspect, stream bed composition, forest canopy and elevation, variables omitted in large-scale climate models. Field measures verified that stream temperatures are not always coupled with air temperatures, revealing “unexpected resilience in mountain streams.”

A more accurate picture of factors affecting the quality of stream habitats helps fish and wildlife managers project and prioritize locations where native trout could survive.  “This (trout) life cycle is susceptible to disruption from climate change, as warm winter temperatures may cause the trout to emerge too early, when there’s nothing to eat, and many could starve,” says FS project leader Andrew Dolloff. “It looks like the winter effects of climate change … could impact coldwater species, but the the resistance we found of stream temperatures to changes in air temperature promises some protection.”

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.”