Plants are flowering earlier than predicted by environmental warming experiments developed by scientists, according to a historical analysis of data from 1,558 plant species from four continents, collected over several decades. The findings are published today in the journal Nature .
Researchers routinely conduct experiments in which they manipulate the ambient temperature around small plant crops to find out how they react when the heat increases. Plant responses are fed into models that are used to predict what changes ecosystems will experience if climate change continues as expected. However, a group of scientists has come to the conclusion that the forecasts may fall short, since historical data indicate that the changes caused by warming are greater than those estimated. Spring starts earlier and the flowering of plants accelerates more than experiments show . Specifically, historical records show that flowers appear between 5 and 6 days earlier for every degree Celsius that the average temperature rises .
Studies of phenology , that is, the relationship between climatic factors and cycles of living beings such as flowering, provide very valuable information on the responses of plants to climate change .
