Picking Cherry Blossoms

I think a much better proxy for climate is not the early year start for cherry blossom picking but actually the early year end for my picking of the nose. During the winter time heating season the indoor air dryness causes my normal nose drippings to thicken, thus blocking those vital airway passages. To maintain proper nasal airway function I must use an index finger carefully inserted into that passage to scoop out the blockage. I have noticed over the years an increasingly later date in which I must perform this necessary chore. I have also noticed a later date at which people are willing to be seen with me in public.
Based upon those two foregoing metrics I think, if that later yearly date for the end of my nose picking should shift to an earlier date, well then, society should spend trillions of dollars and a complete downward modification of living standards and individual freedom to insure against an earlier picking of my nose.
(Although my friends, if I still continue to have any, would probably prefer the earlier date rather than the later date.)

Sorry, not before and after photos of the same part of the city, but I hope you get a rough idea.

Since reading a bit about Washington’s cherry blossom tree location I thought I would take a closer look. The following is just for the SUMMER.

Abstract
Urban heat island
The phenomenon of an urban heat island was investigated by the use of Landsat/Thematic Mapper data sets collected over the metropolitan area of Washington, DC. By combining the derived spectral albedos and temperatures, surface energy composites of five surface categories were analysed. The results indicate that urban heating is attributable to a large excess in heat from the rapidly heating urban surfaces consisting of buildings, asphalt, bare-soil and short grasses. In summer, the symptoms of diurnal heating begin to appear by mid-morning and can be about 10°C warmer than nearby woodlands.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431169208904271#.U1wRGJx9CHQ

I wish I could see this abstract or even full paper.
1964
Notes from a Study of the Microclimatology of the Washington, D. C. Area for the Winter and Spring Seasons
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00431672.1964.9927020?journalCode=vwws20#.U1wSBZx9CHQ

RobRoy says:
April 26, 2014 at 12:47 pm
The paper on Cherry trees seems to refer to UHI as Climate Change.
WUWT??
UHI climate change is the proven sort. I’ve no trouble with that. Other candidates for climate change are speculative at best. (LIA recovery not part of this discussion.)

The article Lief provided, though a pro-AGW article, actually proves the cycles we’ve been discussing at various points. If you look at the chart they provide it clearly shows that the current peak is no different than the one that existed between 1100-1300 CE. Or, the time we refer to as the “medieval warm period.” It fell, not surprisingly, during the subsequent “Little Ice Age.” It began rising again in the 1800s, when the LIA ended and the current warm period began.

Leif Svalgaard has an Obama-like audacity to call “nonsense” my observation that the article he linked is promulgating the AGW ideology.
The article in question begins thus:
Climate change is already having an influence on plants throughout the world, with warming trends creating conditions that cause many plant species to extend to cooler zones on mountain slopes or farther north of their original ranges. Plants are leafing out earlier in the spring and holding leaves longer in the autumn, creating an extended growing season. Of all of the characteristics of plants that relate to global warming, the timing of flowering is the one for which there are the greatest number of observations. These data demonstrate that plants are now flowering earlier than they did a few decades ago, and that changes are mainly a product of temperature increase, rather than a result of other aspects of the weather.
You make your own conclusions. Arguing with Mr. Svalgaard is tantamount to arguing with a drunk bully on the street corner.

We have this in the conclusion.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cherry-Trees-Japan.pdf

Conclusion
The dates of cherry tree festivals in Japan have emerged as one of the most important sources of information on the impacts of climate change on plants. The data set is exceptionally detailed, and extends back in time more than any other known data set on plant flowering times. Because cherry trees have such great cultural importance in Japan, the results of this climate change research have been widely appreciated and publicized, both in Japan and among the international scientific community. Even the cherry trees in Washington, DC, donated by the Japanese government, are responding to higher urban temperatures by flowering one week earlier than in the past, providing an example of the biological impacts of climate change right on the doorstep of the American government.

The authors could also have concluded the following too. I have substituted their words in bold.

The dates of cherry tree festivals in Japan have emerged as one of the most important sources of information on the impacts of Urban Heat Islands on plants. The data set is exceptionally detailed, and extends back in time more than any other known data set on plant flowering times. Because cherry trees have such great cultural importance in Japan, the results of this Urban Heat Islands research have been widely appreciated and publicized, both in Japan and among the international scientific community. Even the cherry trees in Washington, DC, donated by the Japanese government, are responding to higher urban temperatures by flowering one week earlier than in the past, providing an example of the biological impacts of Urban Heat Islands right on the doorstep of the American government.

lsvalgaard says:
April 26, 2014 at 2:34 pm
Jimbo says:
April 26, 2014 at 2:31 pm
Ohhhhh. Bad bolding. I changed their use of “climate change” for “Urban Heat Islands”
No problem. It is clear that the AGW caused by the UHI effect is what the authors have in mind and so convincingly show.

Thanks. I just wich Warmists would focus a little less of man-made greenhouse gases and onto UHI. AGW is global with these folks by the way. The whole planet averaged.

lsvalgaard says:
April 26, 2014 at 2:34 pm
No problem. It is clear that the AGW caused by the UHI effect is what the authors have in mind and so convincingly show.
====
I’m missing something here and don’t get it…..
UHI to me would be like local weather…..AGW or climate change or global warming would be, well, like global……
yet, the paper Leif linked seems to say that UHI and climate change are one and the same???
…plants moving north, etc