New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map for gardeners shows a warming climate
Wintertime minimum temperatures in the U.S. have risen so much in recent decades that the United States Department of Agriculture decided last week to update their Plant Hardiness Zone Map for gardeners for the first time since 1990. The Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones. Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in the new 2012 edition of the map have generally shifted one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period. The old 1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of 1974-1986, while the new map uses data from the 30-year period 1976-2005.
Figure 1. Comparison of the 1990 and 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Maps. Image credit: USDA and Arbor Day Foundation
Northwards, ho!
While humans are generally not attuned enough to nature's rhythms to tell if the climate is changing, plants and animals know the climate is changing. Many species of animals, insects, and plants have shifted their ranges poleward and to higher elevations in recent decades because of global warming. The 2007 IPCC report stated that "numerous studies document a progressively earlier spring by about 2.3 to 5.2 days per decade in the last 30 years in response to climate warming. That report also documented over 400 species that have moved their ranges poleward or to higher elevations because of climate change. For example, conifer trees expanded northwards into former tundra areas at a rate of 12 km per year between 1982 - 2000 in portions of Canada (Fillol and Royer, 2003.) Holly plants moved northwards by several hundred kilometers in recent decades into coastal Norway, Northeast Germany, Denmark, and coastal Sweden in response to warming temperatures (Walther et al., 2005.) As the climate continues to warm, plant and animal species previously unknown in many regions will appear, and will disappear from places they used to inhabit.
Figure 2. Change in the boundary line between conifer forest (taiga) and tundra between 1982 (grey line) and 2000 (white line) over Canada. In the grey box marked "Transect", the rate of northwards migration was 12 km per year, or 228 km (142 miles) in nineteen years. Image credit: Fillol and Royer, 2003, "Variability analysis of the transitory climate regime as defined by the NDVI/Ts relationship derived from NOAA-AVHRR over Canada", Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2003. IGARSS '03. Proceedings. 2003 IEEE International.
Jeff Masters
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WED FEB 1 2012
SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS RETURN ON FRIDAY AHEAD OF A COLD FRONT
THAT WILL MOVE THROUGH THE REGION DURING THE DAY ON SATURDAY. A
FEW OF THESE STORMS WILL BE STRONG WITH GUSTY WINDS AND FREQUENT
CLOUD TO GROUND LIGHTNING. WE ARE FINALLY INTO A WET PERIOD THAT
WILL SEE THE CHANCE FOR SHOWERS INTO MONDAY.
Ok, only til Monday but I'll take it. :)
To underestimate what we know is a Huge mistake,and it matter's not to the Facts of the matter. The Planet does not care about what any one Human thinks in the scheme of it all. The truth matters greatly though.
Its empirical.
Climate Model Indications and the Observed Climate
Global climate models clearly show the effect of human-induced changes on global temperatures. The blue band shows how global temperatures would have changed due to natural forces only (without human influence). The pink band shows model projections of the effects of human and natural forces combined. The black line shows actual observed global average temperatures. The close match between the black line and the pink band indicates that observed warming over the last half-century cannot be explained by natural factors alone, and is instead caused primarily by human factors.
Simulated global temperature in experiments that include human influences (pink line), and model experiments that included only natural factors (blue line). The black line is observed temperature change.
trees and bushes stay in the same place. i guess, that when a bird eats some seed of it, and flies somewhere, poops it out in favorable location, it grows. lol.
What happened to climate change and global warming?
MAXWELL T. BOYKOFF
What happened to climate change and global warming?
The Earth is still getting hotter, but those terms have nearly disappeared from political vocabulary. Instead, they have been replaced by less charged and more consumer-friendly expressions for the warming planet.
President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday was a prime example of this shift. The president said climate change just once compared with zero mentions in the 2011 address and two in 2010. When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.
By contrast, Obama used the terms energy and clean energy nearly two dozen times.
That tally reflects a broader change in how the president talks about the planet. A recent Brown University study looked specifically at the Obama administration's language and found that mentions of climate change have been replaced by calls for clean energy and energy independence.
Graciela Kincaid, a co-author of the study, wrote: The phrases climate change and global warming have become all but taboo on Capitol Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena.
In 2009, the Obama administration purposefully began to refer to greenhouse gas emissions as carbon pollution and heat-trapping emissions.
This change is evident in statements from top officials such as White House science adviser John Holdren, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.
Lubchenco told a reporter that the choice of those terms is intended to make what's happening more understandable and more accessible to non-technical audiences.
These choices are also reflected in news coverage around the world. My colleague Maria Mansfield and I monitor 50 major newspapers in 20 countries, and we documented that explicit mentions of climate change and global warming dropped by more than a third from 2010 to 2011.
There is power in how language is deployed, and people setting policy agendas know this well. In 2002, Republican political strategist Frank Luntz issued a widely cited memo advising that the Bush administration should shift its rhetoric on the climate.
It's time for us to start talking about climate change instead of global warming. . . . Climate change is less frightening than global warming, the memo said.
Luntz was not alone in wanting to change the terminology. The nonprofit group EcoAmerica issued a report in 2009 arguing that the terms global warming and climate change both needed rebranding. In their place, the group recommended the phrase our deteriorating atmosphere.
But what do we lose when global warming and climate change get repackaged as clean energy? We wind up missing a thorough understanding of the breadth of the problem and the range of possible solutions.
To start, talking only about clean energy omits critical biological and physical factors that contribute to the warming climate.
Clean energy doesn't call to mind the ways we use the land and how the environment is changing. Where in the term is the notion of the climate pollution that results from clear-cutting Amazon rain forests? What about methane release in the Arctic, where global warming is exposing new areas of soil in the permafrost?
Clean energy also neatly bypasses any idea that we might need to curb our consumption. If the energy is clean, after all, why worry about how much we're using or how unequal the access to energy sources might be?
And terms such as carbon pollution ignore that climate change isn't just a carbon issue. Some greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide, do not contain carbon, and not all carbon-containing emissions, such as carbon monoxide, trap heat.
When the president moves away from talking about climate change and talks more generally about energy, as he did in the State of the Union, calling for an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy,% the impact is more than just political.
Calling climate change by another name creates limits of its own. The way we talk about the problem affects how we deal with it. And though some new wording may deflect political heat, it can't alter the fact that, climate change or not, the climate is changing.
Maxwell T. Boykoff is an assistant professor in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the author of Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change. He wrote this for The Washington Post. Email him at boykoff@colorado.edu.
Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/02/01/2007334/w hen-did-climate-change-transform.html#storylink=cp y
Your faith in the face of overwhelming facts that contradict your view is truly admirable.
: )
A warming world would be just as threatening as an ice age, if not even more dire. Look at the current drought in Texas and amply that through the entire upper Midwest..a.k.a. (worlds bread basket). How do you think the worlds population of 7 billion would react to one of major sources of food production going through a record drought, followed by record floods every decade. There is a direct correlation between Co2 and temperature of this planet. When one goes up the other follows.
Decade Total Increase Annual Rate of Increase
2002 %u2013 2011 20.72 ppm 2.07 ppm per year
1992 %u2013 2001 16.00 ppm 1.60 ppm per year
1982 %u2013 1991 15.10 ppm 1.51 ppm per year
1972 %u2013 1981 13.95 ppm 1.40 ppm per year
1962 %u2013 1971 8.88 ppm 0.89 ppm per year
As you increase the temperature, you increase the energy, which in turn increases chaos.
Link
The comparison between the 1990 Hardiness map and the new Hardiness map very likely does not show a true difference because of the large overlap of comparing 1974-1986 and 1976-2005. The 1976-1986 is still in the new 1976-2005 data.
In other words, there would be a larger migration northward of those temperature comparisons if the 1990 release showed (for random example) 1956-1986, and the new one showed 1987-2007.
It would show a better representation if the 1976-1986 data was not included in the new release.
Given that the 1976-1986 data is included in the new release, a significant northward migration is still shown.
And it is War that has driven the expanse of technology.
Through out History.
We killed 180 million people in the 20th Century, the greatest number ever in Human History.
And it was driven by conflict, which in the end is Human thought.
The mind kills completely and efficiently.
History shows us that in stark reality.
Oh? And what happens if that little bit of warming turns the most arable land into desert by shifting the jetstream? Or what happens when a species migrates to an area where there is no natural predators? Or what happens when the cooler temperatures is what was keeping a the pest population in check (see the bark beetle and the pine forest devastation for that one)?
Rapid change on any scale, warm or cold, will have consequences. The sooner everyone realizes this, the better off we will all be.
The previously utilized zones (zone 1-zone 11)represent the same temperature ranges on the new 2012 map as they did on the 1990 map. For example, zone 9 still represents areas where annual extreme temps average 20-30F. They merely added two zones on top of the previous 11 zones, to account for areas where annual extreme lows average between 50-60F (zone 12) and 60-70F (zone 13). Thus, no change to the definitions of zones 1-11 was made whatsoever.
The accuracy of the interactive map just dazzled me.
As much as I'm against clean coal the technology is here. Not just CO2 but other pollutants the ones killing 10s of thousands a year prematurely in the USA & giving respiratory illnesses to kids at rates we've never seen, could be slashed huge this year if they can get the cross state air rule passed. Not only would the death rate drop, new jobs would be formed. House passed a bill to delay it..
The USDA ain't that dumb. During the press conference accompanying the presentation of the new Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the USDA spokesman went way out of her way to avoid confirming any connection with ClimateChange. The reporters might have as well said, "Here, step on this landmine..." as to have asked such a politically loaded question.
We expect no less from the ones on the right.
Obstruction and personal interest trump whats good for the Country and the Planet, every time.
Clearly, the right is NOT on America's side. Their total disdain of what is the correct thing to do, is trumped by their collective arrogance, ignorance and greed.
The normal solar min and max cycles do not appreciably affect the Earth's energy budget (i.e, they balance out over climate scales).
The AMO, PDO, and other such features do not create heat. The Earth does not create any appreciable amount of surface warming. It all comes from the sun.
A warmer planet does not mean life will be easier or better. Extinction events throughout Earth's history have often been a result of rapid climate change, both warming and cooling. Rapid change of any kind in climate has consequences and it is naive to think that they will not impact humans.
Billions of people will die if the current arable land we feed everyone with turns into burning desert.
Warm does not automatically imply better.
Climate change drying out forests in western Canada
Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20120130/Climate -change-drying-out-forests-in-western-Canada-12013 0/#ixzz1l9dCwaSj
THE GLOBAL OCEAN is warming, but some places are feeling the heat
more than others. The Tasman Sea, east of Australia, has been identified
in a new study as one of five global ocean “hotspots”.
Temperatures here have risen here by 2ºC over the past 60 years –
three times the average rate of warming in the the world’s oceans. The
warming has been triggered by strengthening wind systems – a result of
climate change – which have driven warm ocean currents toward the poles,
beyond their known boundaries.
The rising temperatures could have stark consequences not only for
marine life, but for the ocean’s capacity to take up heat and carbon
from the atmosphere.
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/ta sman-sea-a-hotspot-for-ocean-warming-climate-chang e.htm
reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the
lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading
owl researcher called “unbelievable.”
Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with
5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in
farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf
courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts.
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre80r0mp-us-owl s-migration/
Strange days .
I'll have you to know i resemble that remark. Why do you have it in for me?
(FIRST!) ;^)}
I ran some quick numbers on Arctic Sea ice area for comparison purposes. In the month of January, 2007, there was a net gain of 1.321 million km2 of ice. For January of 2011, that net gain was 1.182 million km2. But for 2012, that gain was a mere 0.863 million km2.
Any Man who can wear a Fine Hat indoor's..,I'll not toy with.
But Sadly, the Price of wisdom,is age.
'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans (UPDATES)
i would like to destroy the EPA. aint done nothin good but spend money i think.
Internal climate cycles like the PDO, AMO, or ENSO, do not create nor destroy heat energy. They are merely the observed representation of the earth's attempts to redistribute already accumulated heat at varying magnitudes and speeds.
Tell that to all the cleaned up superfund sites. Love Canal? Times Beach? Cuyahoga River?
There are dozens of such sites in my state alone that have been transformed from their toxic pasts into useable land once again.
I do agree that models can only be so accurate and never will be 100%, but at least look at the data we do have to be accurate and make an assumption.
The graph above shows the exact idea you where referring to back in the 70's when scientists were predicting an "Ice Age". You can see from 1940 to 1980 or so we had no increase in global temperature and a slight negative trend, but look at what we have accomplished since 1980...Almost a 4 degree C increase. Now the earth has natural cycles, but this is just a small piece of data from a much larger picture.
Same data-set, bigger picture...blue represents temperature and Co2 is in green. Notice the correlation between the two. They mirror each other perfectly, so we do know that increasing Co2 = higher temperature. I am curious to your point of view on this data?
we've already proven we can effect the climate on local and worldwide levels (see CFCs). anytime someone says we can't I know immediately they've done little to no research on the subject and don't know what they're talking about.
Either their methodology for drawing the map is bad or the map is just terrible.
First, there are places that OBVIOUSLY have been forested for quite a long time, but are shown on the map as only gaining trees since 1982 as a result of climate change. Does anyone really think that the parts of the Côte-Nord region of Quebec next to the Saint Lawrence had no trees before 1982. Look at the following locations:
50.43510° N, 64.40846° W
51.95261° N, 62.86960° W
50.67476° N, 64.59611° W
51.31422° N, 58.47182° W
Numerous photos around these areas show that these trees form thick, fully-developed forests. And considering the growth rates of these types of trees in these cold climates, many of these trees must be at least 50 years old. If there is any truth to their map, they must have used an incredibly liberal definition of treeline.
Second, there are some areas which still show up as completely tundra, both from satellite pictures and from recent photographs.
64.512887° N, 101.361422° W appears to me to be within the 2000 treeline, but pictures from the area show complete tundra.
A quick Google search would have clued the authors in to the fact that their analysis methods, or baseline, or something was incorrect.
If the data was only good for their transect, they should have just published that ... and then written another paper for another transect ... and so forth.
Publishing a map like this destroys their credibility.
Is it painful when your knee jerks like that?
Meanwhile, 3,068 record daily high maximum temperatures were set or tied across the continental U.S. in January, 2012:
Source...
Link
Lovely day at the pool today, Outlook for us remains warm, while others need their Tuques.
It just might get him re-elected. All talk about 'the left this' and 'the right that' discounts the fact that none of these folk elected themselves. If the discussion is moving in the "energy" direction, it's because that's where the discussion leaders think that the votes are. Our votes. That points the mirror, and the blame, squarely where they belong. At you and me.
I work at a lab where climate change and ocean acidification are major components of the work. The parking lot is full of cars, every day. I rest my case.
from the above,
Pine Island Glacier ice shelf rift
NASA's DC-8 flies across the crack forming across the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf on Oct. 26, 2011. The ice shelf is in the midst of a natural process of calving a large iceberg, which it hasn't done since 2001
also related,
Pine Island Glacier
In mid-October 2011, NASA scientists working in Antarctica discovered a massive crack across the Pine Island Glacier, a major ice stream that drains the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Extending for 19 miles (30 kilometers), the crack was 260 feet (80 meters) wide and 195 feet (60 meters) deep. Eventually, the crack will extend all the way across the glacier, and calve a giant iceberg that will cover about 350 square miles (900 square kilometers).
This image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NAS's Terra spacecraft was acquired Nov. 13, 2011, and covers an area of 27 by 32 miles (44 by 52 kilometers), and is located near 74.9 degrees south latitude, 101.1 degrees west longitude.
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
I'm also in WA (around 48 north). While the mean winter temps are higher, there have been sharper and longer cold snaps these last two winters. Tender plants are more likely to reflect the extremes than the mean, I think.
1 February 2012
With neuroprosthetics, people have shown that it's possible to control movement with brain activity, said project collaborator Dr Robert Knight of UC Berkeley. But that work, while not easy, is relatively simple compared to reconstructing language. This experiment takes that earlier work to a whole new level.
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