Plants are finely tuned to the seasonality of their environment, and shifts in the timing of plant activity (i.e. phenology) provide some of the most compelling evidence that species and ecosystems are being influenced by global environmental change. Researchers across disciplines have observed shifting phenology at multiple scales, including earlier spring flowering in individual plants and an earlier spring green-up' of the land surface revealed in satellite images. Experimental and modeling approaches have sought to identify the mechanisms causing these shifts, as well as to make predictions regarding the consequences. Here, we discuss recent advances in several fields that have enabled scaling between species responses to recent climatic changes and shifts in ecosystem productivity, with implications for global carbon cycling.

https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/pdf/S0169-5347(07)00130-9.pdf

Shifting plant phenology in response to global change

Contributing Authors: Tarekegn Abeku (Ethiopia), Isabelle Cote (Canada), Mark Dyurgerov (USA), Martin Edwards (UK), Kristie L. Ebi (USA), Nicole Estrella (Germany), Donald L. Forbes (Canada), Bernard Francou (France), Andrew Githeko (Kenya), Vivien Gornitz (USA), Wilfried Haeberli (Switzerland), John Hay (New Zealand), Anne Henshaw (USA), Terrence Hughes (Australia), Ana Iglesias (Spain), Georg Kaser (Austria), R. Sari Kovats (UK), Joseph Lam (China), Diana Liverman (UK), Dena P. MacMynowski (USA), Patricia Morellato (Brazil), Jeff T. Price (USA), Robert Muir-Wood (UK), Peter Neofotis (USA), Catherine O’Reilly (USA), Xavier Rodo (Spain), Tim Sparks (UK), Thomas Spencer (UK), David Viner (UK), Marta Vicarelli (Italy), Ellen Wiegandt (Switzerland), Qigang Wu (China), Ma Zhuguo (China)

/pdf/assessment-of-observed-changes-and-responses-in-natural-and-4pllyavkl2.pdf

Assessment of observed changes and responses in natural and managed systems

This review of late-Holocene palaeoclimatology represents the results from a PAGES/CLIVAR Intersection Panel meeting that took place in June 2006. The review is in three parts: the principal high-resolution proxy disciplines (trees, corals, ice cores and documentary evidence), emphasizing current issues in their use for climate reconstruction; the various approaches that have been adopted to combine multiple climate proxy records to provide estimates of past annual-to-decadal timescale Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures and other climate variables, such as large-scale circulation indices; and the forcing histories used in climate model simulations of the past millennium. We discuss the need to develop a framework through which current and new approaches to interpreting these proxy data may be rigorously assessed using pseudo-proxies derived from climate model runs, where the `answer' is known. The article concludes with a list of recommendations. First, more raw proxy data are required from the diverse disciplines and from more locations, as well as replication, for all proxy sources, of the basic raw measurements to improve absolute dating, and to better distinguish the proxy climate signal from noise. Second, more effort is required to improve the understanding of what individual proxies respond to, supported by more site measurements and process studies. These activities should also be mindful of the correlation structure of instrumental data, indicating which adjacent proxy records ought to be in agreement and which not. Third, large-scale climate reconstructions should be attempted using a wide variety of techniques, emphasizing those for which quantified errors can be estimated at specified timescales. Fourth, a greater use of climate model simulations is needed to guide the choice of reconstruction techniques (the pseudo-proxy concept) and possibly help determine where, given limited resources, future sampling should be concentrated.

/pdf/high-resolution-palaeoclimatology-of-the-last-millennium-a-futl99a0xa.pdf

High-resolution palaeoclimatology of the last millennium: a review of current status and future prospects:

Climate change associated effects on grape and wine quality and production

This paper reviews the European summer heat wave of 2003, with special emphasis on the first half of August 2003, jointly with its significant societal and environmental impact across Western and Central Europe. We show the pattern of record-breaking temperature anomalies, discuss it in the context of the past, and address the role of the main contributing factors responsible for the occurrence and persistence of this event: blocking episodes, soil moisture deficit, and sea surface temperatures. We show that the anticyclonic pattern corresponds more to an anomalous northern displacement of the North Atlantic subtropical high than a canonical blocking structure, and that soil moisture deficit was a key factor to reach unprecedented temperature anomalies. There are indications that the anomalous Mediterranean Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have contributed to the heat wave of 2003, whereas the role of SST anomalies in other oceanic regions is still under debate. There are methodological limitations to evaluate excess mortality due to excessive temperatures; however, the different studies available in the literature allow us to estimate that around 40,000 deaths were registered in Europe during the heat wave, mostly

/pdf/a-review-of-the-european-summer-heat-wave-of-2003-4s04tauwcr.pdf

A Review of the European Summer Heat Wave of 2003

Summer temperature variations are reconstructed from harvest dates since 1370. French records of grape-harvest dates in Burgundy were used to reconstruct spring–summer temperatures from 1370 to 2003 using a process-based phenology model developed for the Pinot Noir grape. Our results reveal that temperatures as high as those reached in the 1990s have occurred several times in Burgundy since 1370. However, the summer of 2003 appears to have been extraordinary, with temperatures that were probably higher than in any other year since 1370.

Historical phenology: Grape ripening as a past climate indicator

Dans cette massive Crise du feodalisme, Guy Bois, qui est simultanement « medieviste » et « moderniste », etudie entre autres, l'histoire economique et sociale du XVIe siecle. Mais d'un XVIe siecle (normand, voire francais) mis en perspective de la fin du Moyen Age. Tres exactement, l'essor (ou le phenomene de recuperation) qu'on enregistre de 1460 a 1560 est situe par l'auteur dans les prolongements de la regression bas-medievale. Avec les facteurs specifiques de celle-ci : les epidemies, l'unification microbienne du monde, la guerre mais aussi les raisons de la guerre.

En haute Normandie : Malthus ou Marx ?

Le climat de Bourgogne et d'ailleurs XIVe-XXe siècle

Canicule, fraîcheurs, vendanges (France, XVe–XIXe siècles)

This paper reviews the climatic history of northern France from the grape harvest dates of the Burgundian vineyards. The grape harvest date is constrained by the mean surface air temperature during the growing season (April–August). At the start of the grape harvest dates series – during the 1380s and from 1415 to 1435 – the tendency is towards early harvest dates and warmer conditions, starvation due to crop scorching in 1420 included. During the second half of the 'Quattrocento', there are later harvest dates and cooler springs/summers, exemplified by the 1481 famine, due to rain and cold. The 1500s, 20s, 30s and 50s are characterised by blasts of warmer summers. The 'midsummer night's dream' (1596/7) can turn into a nightmare … Then, a cold 'long seventeenth century'? This is quite pronounced from 1570 to 1630, with, however, a slight improvement around 1600–20. Major waves of hot summers were experienced during the 1630s, 60s and 80s. Is the Maunder minimum, between 1645 and 1715, responsible ...

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

Papers

Historical phenology: Grape ripening as a past climate indicator

En haute Normandie : Malthus ou Marx ?

Le climat de Bourgogne et d'ailleurs XIVe-XXe siècle

Canicule, fraîcheurs, vendanges (France, XVe–XIXe siècles)

The climate in Burgundy and elsewhere, from the fourteenth to the twentieth century