By Paul Homewood
According to the BBC:
Species in the United Kingdom are under threat as they are "tricked" by our seasons shifting with the changing climate.
On average, key events that herald the start of spring are happening nine days earlier, external than a quarter of a century ago.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cly24dxeer1o
The only ones being tricked are the BBC’s licence payers!
According to HH Lamb, writing in 1982, the start of spring occurred later on average in the 1960s and 70s, thanks to global cooling, than it had done thirty years earlier.
“The mean date of onset of spring at Oxford has changed from 4th March between 1920 and 1950 to about 20th March between 1963 and 1980”
Climate, History and the Modern World- p274
In short, the climate now is pretty much back to what it was a century ago!
As seems to be the case most of the time, it is the relative absence of extremely cold weather which has pushed up average temperatures in spring.
The warmest Marches on record were in 1938 and 1957, and recent years have not seen temperatures get anywhere near those.
As for the idea that there is some sort of monolithic thing called nature with a biological clock, it is simply absurd. Nature does not do averages.
And as the above graph shows, averages mean nothing. Temperatures in March can vary by more than six degrees from one year to another, and variations of four degrees are common. Yet nature adapts with very little problem, or perhaps “ reacts” would be a better description.
It would not be a BBC article without the almost mandatory reference to extreme weather:
“Climate change will bring higher temperatures but also more extreme weather leading to confusion amongst some species.”
There is of course no evidence that weather is becoming more extreme in spring. Take rainfall for instance:
Since the dawn of civilisation mankind has celebrated the end of winter and the onset of spring. Only the BBC could turn it into some sort of calamity!