Part Two / How our Planet is Changing

2.21 Nature’s Calendar

All online sources accessed on

  1. species range and phenology … indicators of climate change Parmesan, C., and Yohe, G., ‘A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems’, Nature, 421 (6198), 2003: 37–42, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01286; Root, T. L., et al., ‘Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants’, Nature, 421 (6198), 2003: 57–60, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01333; Walther, G. R., et al., ‘An ecological “footprint” of climate change’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272 (1571), 2005: 1427–32, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3119.

    many cases of species shifting their geographic ranges Lenoir, J., et al., ‘A significant upward shift in plant species optimum elevation during the 20th century’, Science, 320 (5884), 2008: 1768–71, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1156831; Massimino, D., et al., ‘The geographical range of British birds expands during 15 years of warming’, Bird Study, 62 (4), 2015: 523–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/00063657.2015.1089835; Parmesan, C., et al., ‘Poleward shifts in geographical ranges of butterfly species associated with regional warming’, Nature, 399 (6736), 1999: 579–83, https://doi.org/10.1038/21181.

    altering the timing of phenological events Cotton, P. A., ‘Avian migration phenology and global climate change’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100 (21), 2003: 12219–22, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1930548100; Mazaris, A. D., et al., ‘Phenological response of sea turtles to environmental variation across a species’ northern range’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280 (1751), 2013: Article 20122397, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2397; Parmesan, C., ‘Influences of species, latitudes and methodologies on estimates of phenological response to global warming’, Global Change Biology, 13 (9), 2007: 1860–72, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01404.x.

    tracking cool conditions as our planet warms Hughes, L., ‘Biological consequences of global warming: is the signal already apparent?’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 15 (2), 2000: 56–61, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(99)01764-4; Scheffers, B. R., et al., ‘The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people’, Science, 354 (6313), 2016: Article aaf7671, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf7671.

    great tits are breeding up to two weeks earlier Cole, E. F., et al., ‘Spatial variation in avian phenological response to climate change linked to tree health’, Nature Climate Change, 11 (10), 2021: 872–8, , 11 (10), 2021: 872–8, , 11 (10), 2021: 872–8, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01140-4; Bauer, Z., et al., ‘Changing climate and the phenological response of great tit and collared flycatcher populations in floodplain forest ecosystems in central Europe’, International Journal of Biometeorology, 54 (1), 2010: 99–111, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-009-0259-7; Samplonius, J. M., et al., ‘Phenological sensitivity to climate change is higher in resident than in migrant bird populations among European cavity breeders’, Global Change Biology, 24 (8), 2018: 3780–90, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14160.

    shrinking by 87,000 square kilometres a year Peng, X., et al., ‘A holistic assessment of 1979–2016 global cryospheric extent’, Earth’s Future, 9 (8), 2021: Article e2020EF001969, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001969.

    some species may be … reducing their body size Jirinec, V., et al., ‘Morphological consequences of climate change for resident birds in intact Amazonian rainforest’, Science Advances, 7 (46), 2021, Article eabk1743, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abk1743; Prokosch, J., et al., ‘Are animals shrinking due to climate change? Temperature-mediated selection on body mass in mountain wagtails’, Oecologia, 189 (3), 2019: 841–9, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-019-04368-2; Sheridan, J. A., and Bickford, D., ‘Shrinking body size as an ecological response to climate change’, Nature Climate Change, 1 (8), 2011: 401–6, https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1259.

  2. pied flycatchers have been arriving earlier Samplonius et al., ‘Phenological sensitivity to climate change’; Samplonius, J. M., and Both, C., ‘Climate change may affect fatal competition between two bird species’, Current Biology, 29 (2), 2019: 327–331.e2, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.11.063.

    entire biomes are shifting Scheffers et al., ‘The broad footprint of climate change’; Dobrowski, S. Z., et al., ‘Protected-area targets could be undermined by climate change-driven shifts in ecoregions and biomes’, Communications Earth and Environment, 2, 2021: Article 198, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00270-z.