From the “desperation to find climate change everywhere” department comes this, this, thing…
TV coverage of cycling races can help document the effects of climate change
Analysing nearly four decades of archive footage from the Tour of Flanders, researchers from Ghent University have been able to detect climate change impacts on trees. Their findings were published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
Focusing on trees and shrubs growing around recognisable climbs and other ‘landmarks’ along the route of this major annual road cycling race in Belgium, the team looked at video footage from 1981 to 2016 obtained by Flemish broadcaster VRT. They visually estimated how many leaves and flowers were present on the day of the course (usually in early April) and linked their scores to climate data.
The ecologists found that the trees had advanced the timing of leafing and flowering in response to recent temperature changes. Before 1990, almost no trees had grown leaves at the time of the spring race. After that year, more and more trees visible in the television footage – in particular magnolia, hawthorn, hornbeam and birch trees – were already in full leaf.
These shifts were most strongly related to warmer average temperatures in the area, which have increased by 1.5°C since 1980.
“Early-leafing trees can be good news for some species as they grow faster and produce more wood”, says Prof. Pieter De Frenne from Ghent University, lead author of this study. “However, their leaves also cast shadows. When trees flush earlier in the year, they shadow for a longer period of time, affecting other animals and plants, and even whole ecosystems.”
“Some of the flowers growing under these trees may not be able to receive enough sunlight to bloom. As a result, insects can go without nectar and may struggle to find enough spots to sunbathe”, he adds.
Phenology – the study of natural phenomena that recur periodically such as leafing and flowering – is mostly based on long-term observations and repeat photography, with data often being biased towards common species or geographical regions. In this study, archive footage allowed the researchers to use previously unexploited records of twelve tree species in the Flanders region in order to build long-term datasets of phenological responses.
“Our method could also be used to collect data on other aspects important for ecological or evolutionary research, such as tree health, water levels in rivers and lakes, and the spread of invasive species. Only by compiling data from the past will we be able to predict the future effects of climate change on species and ecosystems”, De Frenne comments.
Television footage of cycling races lends itself well to research as these have relatively fixed routes and are organised around the globe, providing an opportunity to study a diverse range of species and locations that are currently understudied.
De Frenne points out that researchers could also take advantage of video material from other annual sports events such as marathons, golf tournaments and rally races, or even news coverage featuring open-air concerts or iconic landmarks surrounded by trees.
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Pieter De Frenne, Lisa Van Langenhove, Alain Vandriessche, Cedric Bertrand, Kris Verheyen, and Pieter Vangansbeke (2018) ‘Using archived television video footage to quantify phenology responses to climate change’ is published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution on 3 July 2018 and will be available here: https:/
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I guess it just depends how you look at things. Maybe trees leafing out early is a catastrophe. Or maybe it’s evidence of the adaptibility of living organisms.
Why do they imagine these trees have the evolutionary ability to adapt in this manner? It’s because spring is a highly variable event and trees have to be able to react!
The whole of England had more trees in the past. Perhaps it is that that has caused the warming? I see a correlation coming on. 🙂
I have been watching for leaf emergence for many years as a guide for planting certain vegetables.
It has only a secondary relationship to atmospheric temperatures. The deciding factors are soil moisture and soil temperature which are in turn determined by things such as winter snow cover, fall moisture reserves, depth of winter frost, the number of sunny spring days, convective winds, and yes (in some part) to atmospheric temperature.
In my area, I have seen leaf out as early as the end of April and as late as near the end of June (a result of drought).
As an indicator of global warming, I call B/S as a result of no real relevance.
And, I would suspect that the date of the last killing frost would impact soil temperatures. Focusing on a single number — the average global temperature — makes it easy to overlook the fact that most of the warming has been at night and in the Winter.
Love to see some footage of sea level rise. Notice there isn’t any ?
Be sure to make sure the air pressures are equalised if you do that comparison. There’s more than a few centimetres of ‘error’/’uncertainty’ there.
Same goes for all other sea-level comparisons – got to have a solid benchmark after all.
Yes, watching a real-time movie of grass growing would be more exciting than watching sea level rise.
Phenology is a new hot topic for obtaining climate change grant money — such studies nearly always contain dire warnings, in this case:
““Early-leafing trees can be good news for some species as they grow faster and produce more wood”, says Prof. Pieter De Frenne from Ghent University, lead author of this study. “However, their leaves also cast shadows. When trees flush earlier in the year, they shadow for a longer period of time, affecting other animals and plants, and even whole ecosystems.””
No mention of the positive effects on lengthening the growing season and food production — there is a blindness involved that is common to nearly all climate studies — blind to the knowledge that climate is not a “set in concrete” collection of weather conditions. Real world climate shifts around, timing changes, there are long, harsh winters and short mild winters, spring advances for a decade then retreats for a decade…..
Part of the problem is the definition of climate as “a 30-year average” — nearly every year will be above or below average — any shifting value will be away from the average and considered a threat — but it is just playing silly buggers with numbers.
Okay, much like tree rings are actually a measure of growth conditions, water, sunlight, temps, and God knows what else, the next new proxy is – trees on TV, where the last thing on the mind of the camera operators was the trees themselves. That’s like watching concert footage to see the jewelry preferences of the audience.
From this we learn that trees can adapt to global warming. So can humans. It is not a real problem.
But sunbathing insects can’t, apparently. Think of the insects!
We’ve seen this kind of claim before, regarding Cherry Blossom Dates. At least with the Cherry Blossom Festivals, there is a longer history than the 36 years of bicycle race photos (Washington DC records go back to shortly after the trees were planted in 1913; Japanese records go back much farther). And if you look at the entire record, recent “early” blooming is far from unprecedented.
Ah Alan……NOW YOU ARE CHERRY-BLOSSOM-PICKING the records !!
I’m sure increased CO2 has nothing at all to do with this.
Ironic, many of these places would have been covered with lush thick forests centuries ago. They complained when the forests were cut down. Now they are complaining forests are growing back. Just cannot make these people happy, geesh! Would they just pick one or the other already.
These guys are really something. If trees get leaves early then other critters will not get enough sunlight.
Dud.
That’s the whole point of forest. They shade out everything else and hog the sunlight for themselves.
Forests in northern latitudes are bleak ecosystem (fungus, ants, termites, a few birds,worms) by and large. Grasslands are much more productive. So, they are worried about those trees hogging sunlight, cut some of them down. Controlled burns are great in this regard. Diversity!
BTW, nobody denies the world has warmed up since in the last several decades. That is NOT the debate. The debate is whether this warming is unprecedented AND due to human activity. The debates isn’t serious, because the only human activity under serious investigation is the burning of fossil fuels. All other activities, like the creation of vast methane farms (rice paddies), deforestation and large scale farming efforts with a change in land use, are ignored in this discussion.
As is the fact that we only have a very short, all world, full-coverage temperature series to work with, who knows?
I read phrenology. On reflection, there may not be that much difference. 🙂
A good follow up would be a blind study of cores taken from these trees. The dendo folks cannot know where they came from though; just do the analysis. Lets see how the results correspond.
Notoriously absent is any analysis of the impact of Climate Change on the riders themselves. I see no discussion or measurements taken of rider’s forearms or calves to show the progression of degradation caused by increasing temperatures around the world, all brought to one location.
After all, the whole issue of Climate Change Gorebal Warmining is the negative effect on humans, yet there is no observations taken of the cyclists physiology which is a key metric.
Additionally, there is no accounting for the increased levels of CO2 that enhance growth along the raceway that come from exhalation from the riders. We need more research. More grant money.
The farmers must be loving the recent earlier planting season – nothing to dislike there.
Planted area and farm diesel fuel use is way up.
“Some of the flowers growing under these trees may not be able to receive enough sunlight to bloom. As a result, insects can go without nectar and may struggle to find enough spots to sunbathe”, he adds.
OMG! Insects are running out of flowers in sunny spots!
Jeesh, this “study” would be hilarious if they weren’t actually serious.
Is that Alfred E. Neuman in the photo? I think we are going to need anthropologists to document the decline of research quality in the EU brought on by the climate change policy crusades. They will be groveling in the streets and alleys by 2030.
The photo in the article shows most of the cyclists wearing short sleeves on what seems to be a sunny but windy day (the three flags all show a wind blowing from the left), but the trees don’t have leaves yet. Was this an unusually warm day during an otherwise cool spring, which would incite the cyclists to wear short sleeves?
Cyclists burn a lot of calories in a short period of time. As a result their bodies need to dump a lot of heat.
No, it’s a macho thing.
OK, let me see if I got this right. Trees planted as saplings along roads with drainage ditches on one side and cleared areas on the other with some combination of mowing and farming, “scientists” then were able to discern variations in growth attributed to changing climate using photos/videos over a 25+ year period. Oh, and even more impressive is their use of the latest photo analysis software (I’m guessing) to subtract variations due to the normal growth as the trees mature. How could this fail?
PS
Given that the climate between Tucson and Flanders are very different; here is my example: I planted an Ironwood tree or palo fierro (Olneya tesota) in my yard ~15 years ago. It is a relatively slow growing tree, but has done so steadily and in 2016 after 13 years it flowered for the first time, last year it did not and did again this year.
Cheers, Mark * * *
I have a male ginkgo tree in my yard.
It’s never flowered.
I wonder why.
The films/videos only go back to 1981?!
Lot’s of comments made already about the quality of the images and the time they were recorded.
I haven’t read all the comments but I haven’t noticed one that mentioned that “climate” is cyclic. ( I think 60 years is a fairly good “picture” of it’s downs and ups?)
This time, “Move along, nothing to see here” is accurate.
I’m not convinced we are doomed.
Where we live, a favorite flower is the Green-banded Mariposa Lily ( Calochortus macrocarpus ).
Photo: Mariposa Lily
We moved here in 1989. The Lilies bloomed about July 1st and peaked on the 4th – an easy date for us to remember.
This year the lilies started blooming – on Sunday, the 1st, and new ones will continue to show through this coming Sunday.
These are the only color in an otherwise brown/green landscape.
They do not go unnoticed. If the link doesn’t work, search for the green-banded Mariposa Lily with purple flower.
I too have noticed a small trend in earlier leafing and flowering but accompanied by healthier growth. I have been subscribing this to increasing CO2 concentrations which didn’t seem unreasonable and the plants seem to be thriving on it. Should we be concerned for the future of our plants? This highly unscientific research seems to want to lead us to believe.
Limited, circumstantial evidence is evidence valid within a limited, specified frame of reference in time and space. Inference or extrapolation (i.e. created knowledge) to larger frames, to global proportions, is useful, but accuracy is inversely proportional to the product of time and space offsets from the established frame of reference.
All that can be said is
“they didn’t find what they weren’t looking for
So, they have found something in one of our classics to support local/regional warming. Of course there are thermometer huts too, which indeed show a small increase in tenperature since the 1830’s, but even so, temperature in the first week of April can be from -10 to +20ºC in adjacent years. Not for nothing April is here called “freakish April” (untranslatable from Flemish/Dutch, but says it all about the unstable weather in that month).
Anyway, this kind of “science” looks at trends within extreme year by year regional variable weather, which has statistically zero significance…
For the rest, the Tour of Flanders is the start of the new season for one of the three main sports in our country:
– Billiards – in the pub
– Soccer – next to the pub
– Cycling – from one pub to the next pub
Greetings from the world’s beer country (300 kinds of beer – 11.35 million inhabitants)