Year 3, Month 10, Day 20: All Russet Brown

The Easton Star-Democrat (DE) tells us about a study of changing leaves that reinforces what should now be absolutely common knowledge:

COLLEGE PARK – Fall colors are arriving later and are fading more quickly because of climate change, according to researchers.

The climate-driven changes are already visible in some forests in New England. Scientists worry that leaf-peeping hotspots in Maryland also could eventually see duller foliage and delays in the start of leaf season.

“It [climate change] certainly could have an impact here, as well,” said Saran Twombly, a researcher at the National Science Foundation, who studies the impact of climate change on foliage.

In Massachusetts’ Harvard Forest, data collected by retired Harvard professor John O’Keefe suggests that leaves are changing color four days later than they did in 1993.

In New Hampshire, sugar maples are shedding their leaves two to five days later than two decades ago, according to data collected by the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in Woodstock, N.H.

Warmer temperatures and erratic weather patterns driven by climate change have an adverse affect on tree health, according to phenologists – those who study the effects of seasonal changes on plants.

Peepers away! Sent October 13:

At first blush, the news that autumn leaves are changing color a few days ahead of schedule doesn’t seem like much to worry about. But the climate crisis requires long-term thinking; it requires us to extrapolate from current trends, and to integrate scientific data from as many sources as possible.

The deniers in our media and politics who claim the science of climate change “isn’t settled” should have no more credibility than flat-Earthers or those who believe the moon landings were faked; the climatological evidence confirming global warming is overwhelmingly conclusive and extremely alarming.

For millennia, Earth’s steady, predictable, and hospitable climate has allowed our species to prosper, our civilization to develop, and our capacity to understand our universe to expand a millionfold. Now that’s changing; those early autumn leaves are one of countless harbingers of a new and less welcoming future we’ve inadvertently created for our descendants. We can no longer afford to ignore these signs.

Warren Senders