I haven’t seen this report cited in the papers or on any of the major internet news outlets. The report was authored by the renowned James Hansen and a team of climatologists. If you don’t have the time or patience to read this article, scan the figures as they tell the story of climates past and show where we are at present. If you are a teacher of middle school or high school students, this report will give your students some of the background they need to understand the issues associated with climate change, a topic that all of us as concerned citizens should be aware of. The general increase in the surface temperatures of the world are shown in the figures. As predicted from all the models, Figure 1 (Right) shows that the temperate and arctic regions are heating up faster than the rest of the planet.

Figure 1. Left: Annual-mean global-mean anomalies. Right: Global map of surface temperature anomalies for 2008.

Note also the hot spot that represents California on this figure. High temperatures in California over the last 15 years are certainly one of the factors associated with the decline of western monarch populations but that is another story:

In Figure 2 you can see that global surface temperatures began to increase significantly in the 70s and they continue to rise. In spite of being a bit cooler in 2008 than in recent years, 2008 was still the eighth warmest year on record. But, there are other curious patterns in the climate data. I’ve spent many hours trying to relate monarch numbers to climate variability and one of the things that jumped out at me in the climate data was the dramatic shift in the pattern of year-to-year variation that began in the mid 70s.

You can verify this shift by visiting Climate at a Glance, and plugging in the data for winter months from 1895 to the present for your state or region of the country. Below is the record for Kansas for the month of March. Note how the amplitude of the variation of year-to-year temperatures has been reduced since the mid 70s. March temperatures used to be both colder and hotter than they have been in the last 30 years – on average – and the general trend is for warmer early spring temperatures. These warmer springs are one of the reasons for the phenology project.

March 1901 – 2000 Average = 42.59 degF
March 1895 – 2008 Trend = 0.19 degF / Decade

And then there is the October record for Kansas (check out your state). Again, we see that the amplitude of the average monthly temperatures for October show less variation from the mid-seventies to the present than at any previous time in this record.

October 1901 – 2000 Average = 56.72 degF
October 1895 – 2008 Trend = -0.02 degF / Decade

What does this mean? In general, it means that the last frosts in the spring will be earlier and the first frosts in the fall are later than in the past, giving rise to longer growing seasons. But, why is the warm period of the year getting longer and longer? There must be something larger at work here. What is damping the variation in the average temperatures of these months that provide the transitions from one season to another? I’ve shown these trends to a meteorologist and several ecologists and no one has been able to provide a good cause and effect explanation for these trends.

Unfortunately, there are no indications that the warming trend indicated by all of these data is going to slow down or decrease. Greenhouse gases that trap outgoing radiation are increasing. Indeed, given the rate of increase in the number of part per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in recent years (average increase in ppm per year for the last 5 decades starting in 1959 = .91, 1.23, 1.63, 1.53, 1.97 – from NOAA Research), it is likely that the global surface temperatures will rise even more rapidly in the coming decades. The prospective consequences of such changes are much debated but it is certain that emissions must be reduced or the world will be a very different and less hospitable place in the future.

This term was new to many of you last year when I tried to recruit Monarch Watchers to observe and report the seasonal development of milkweeds and nectar plants used by monarchs. Phenology seems like a strange word and it is all too similar to the more familiar term – phrenology (the study of the bumps on people’s heads as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities). Phenology, on the other hand, is the study of the seasonal changes in plant and animal life brought about by increasing temperature in the spring. Recording the dates of phenophases, or stages, in the development of plants such as first emergence, first flowers, first fruits, is becoming an important means of assessing the impact of climate change. However, to be usefully applied to this end, the same data has to be recorded each year by many, many observers over broad areas of the continent.

Being interested in this topic, and in climate change, I contacted the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) last year and asked if Monarch Watch could become a partner in this endeavor. Fortunately, they agreed and Monarch Watch became their first partner organization. My hope was that this partnership would encourage many of you, as well as others who are interested in phenology, to record the developmental stages of milkweeds and nectar plants used by monarchs. Unfortunately, due to growing pains and the fact that everything in life and technology takes longer to accomplish than expected, the USA-NPN website wasn’t quite as ready or user friendly as it needed to be last season; however, the site is ready now.

Before logging on, you might want to review the justifications for this project and other articles posted to the Blog last year:

There are four simple steps to submitting your phonological observations for milkweeds and monarchs via the USA-NPN website:

1. Sign up to become an observer – be sure to select “Monarch Watch” as the Partner Organization at the bottom of the form. Shortly after clicking the “Create new account” button at the bottom of the page you will receive an email message with further instruction.

2. Select your observation site and your plants and register them online.

3. Learn the phenophases for your plants and begin making observations. In the “Search Plants to Monitor” form be sure “Monarch Watch” is selected as the “Partner” to narrow the plant list to the fourteen species we are interested in at this time.

4. Report your observations online.

As mentioned above, there are fourteen Monarch Watch plants – five milkweeds and nine nectar plants. The plants were selected on the basis of their distributions, seasonal importance to monarchs, and period of bloom. A click on each name in the species search will take you to a page with a picture of the flower, a brief description of each plant, and an explanation of the observations you should make.

Other milkweeds and numerous other nectar plants can be found among the plants of interest listed by NPN.

Rather than recording each observation online as it happens, I keep a file on my computer called Phenology 09 (a notebook works well too) to which I add observations made as they occur. The plan is to submit all of the data toward the end of the spring and once again later after the mid and late season observations have been made.

Keeping your own personal records is useful in that it helps you anticipate seasonal changes but also tells you how the present year compares with previous seasons.

The climate is changing and all predictions are that the rate of change is going to accelerate in the coming decade. These changes are certain to affect monarchs and the milkweeds and nectar plants upon which they depend. My hope is that I can persuade many of you to record the phenology of these plants so that we can better understand the relationship of monarchs to the resources they utilize.

Recent articles on this topic:

Local citizens to help catalog climate change
The Kansas City Star, March 2009

First bloom: Butterfly network enlists citizen scientists to record rites of spring
Kansas Alumni magazine, January 2009 (74K PDF file)

You don’t have to live in Kansas to participate – we would like to encourage anyone and everyone in the U.S. to join in! This is a great project for classrooms, nature centers, families, and those interested in making additional uses of their Monarch Waystation habitats.

Kansans asked to track climate change in their own backyards

Monarch Watch, a citizen science outreach program at the University of Kansas, invites school children, gardeners and interested citizens to observe and record the growth of 16 common and easily identified plants through the growing season in Kansas.

“With all the talk about climate change, one might suppose that such changes would affect the growth of plants and the first appearances of some birds and mammals,” said Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch. “In fact, scientists are just beginning to record seasonal changes in plant and animal life in a systematic manner.”

The study of the seasonal “firsts” such as first robins, first shoots or first flowers is known as phenology. Monarch Watch is collaborating with a nationwide effort headed by the National Phenology Network to record the phenology, or “firsts,” for plants that are important to the success of monarch butterfly populations.

Input from the public will help scientists to distinguish changes that are due to unusual weather patterns from those attributable to long-term climatic changes.

To participate, visit the Monarch Watch blog (“Milkweed and Nectar Plant Phenology Project“) describing “firsts” that require observation.

Next, record the date of the observed “firsts,” such as first flower, in a notebook and submit the data at the National Phenology Network Web site.

“There are only a few scientists and they can’t be everywhere to record the many ‘firsts’ each year,” said Taylor. “That’s why we need citizens to help. We need observers everywhere.”

Monarch Watch is particularly interested in plants such as milkweeds that are hosts for monarch larvae and nectar plants that are visited by adult butterflies to fuel reproduction or migration.

“Studies of the year-to-year differences in the first appearances of these plants will help us understand the yearly differences in the size of the monarch population,” said Taylor.

Other groups are tracking plants important to honey bees.

Earlier plant growth and flowering due to climate change are of increasing interest to scientists. In 2007, March in Kansas was warmer than in any year since 1910 — with the result that in some areas garden plants, crops and native plants were as much as 12 days ahead of normal by April 2. Then came the “big freeze” of April 4-10, with as much as 60 hours of freezing temperatures.

“It was simply too warm too soon,” Taylor said. “The result was devastating for crops and for all plant life in eastern Kansas as well as the wildlife that was dependent on the pollen, nectar, foliage or fruits, nuts and berries that would have been produced.”

This year is cooler than normal — but how much are plants delayed?

“If we can get lots of people to record their observations, we can make sense of these year-to-year changes,” Taylor said. “Participation in this study is quite easy.”

By the end of the month NPN will have a new web page and the plants we wish to track for monarchs will be incorporated into their lists of plants that are being tracked nationwide. Finding the milkweeds and nectar plants in this list won’t be too difficult but the whole process of recording the monarch plants will become easier by the first of May when NPN completes an interface page that is designed specifically for Monarch Watch and monarch butterfly plants.

For further justification of the need to record the phenology of plants, insects, and birds, please see “Global Warming Rushes Timing of Spring” (ABC News).

As I mentioned in my original posting on this topic, to generate the data needed to make useful comparisons from year to year, we need hundreds of monarch watchers, and those of you with Monarch Waystations, throughout the country to record your observations. This project is a great one for kids. We need to get our young people to become aware of what is happening seasonally and to our planet.

Since you won’t be able to enter your data at the NPN website until the end of the month, please keep notes on the first emergence of milkweeds and first buds, etc. for now. I’ll announce when it is possible to record your data on the NPN website.

These kinds of data are also needed to help us sort out the impacts of human-induced (anthropogenic) changes in the environment and those due to weather and climate. In short, we need to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the changing availability of the host and nectar plant resources utilized by monarchs. We will monitor 6 species of milkweeds and 10 nectar plants. Our goal is to create maps with isoclines that show the progressive greening up of the resources used by monarchs. For this to be a successful project, one in which we can make comparisons of one year with another, we will need hundreds of you to contribute your “firsts” from all over the country. We hope you will participate. If you have a Monarch Waystation, this project is another good way to put it to use for monarchs.

This project is a collaborative effort and we anticipate that it will be fully online in mid March or perhaps a bit later. Just before the website becomes fully operational, we will outline the program in greater detail and will provide additional justification and instructions for this program. The growing season for milkweeds and nectar plants is about to start in the south and it may have already started in some areas. If you are in the south, please start keeping a record of dates now, as the data can be submitted later.

Additional announcements about this program will be posted in the coming weeks.

We will monitor the following growth (or phenophases) for milkweeds:

- Date of first emergence from soil – the first shoots to break soil
- Date of first flower bud (no matter how small)
- Date of first open flower or floret on a flower head
- Date of last flower on a flower head
- Date of first seed pod (marked by elongation of the ovary at the base of a flower)
- Date of first open seedpod

For the nectar plants we will only record the dates of first flowering.

The milkweed and nectar plant species have been selected on the basis of their broad distributions, their use as season markers (e.g., American plum) and their importance to monarchs. The links for each species will lead you to distribution maps, species accounts and images of the plants and the flowers.

Milkweed Species

Asclepias asperula – Spider milkweed [Distribution] [Images]

Asclepias incarnata – Swamp milkweed [Distribution] [Images]

Asclepias speciosa – Showy milkweed [Distribution] [Images]

Asclepias syriaca – Common milkweed [Distribution] [Images]

Asclepias tuberosa – Butterfly milkweed [Distribution] [Images]

Asclepias viridis – Green antelopehorn milkweed [Distribution] [Images]

We will monitor spring, summer and fall nectar plants.

Spring (April-May)

Syringa vulgaris – Common lilac [Distribution] [Images]

Taraxacum officinale – Common dandelion [Distribution] [Images]

Prunus americana – American plum [Distribution] [Images]

Summer (June-July)

Cephalanthus occidentalis – Common button bush [Distribution] [Images]

Echinacea purpurea – Eastern purple coneflower [Distribution] [Images]

Vernonia fasciculata – Prairie ironweed [Distribution] [Images]

Fall (August-October)

Helianthus annuus – Common sunflower [Distribution] [Images]

Oligoneuron rigidum (Solidago rigida) – Rigid goldenrod [Distribution] [Images]

Liatris aspera -Tall blazing star [Distribution] [Images]

Verbesina virginica – Frost weed [Distribution] [Images]

Symphyotrichum ericoides (Aster ericoides) – White heath aster [Distribution] [Images]

We hope you will participate in the phenology program outlined above. Observing plant growth and recording the data is quite easy – simply follow these steps:

1. Review the list of plants along with their pictures and distributions to determine which species occur in your area.

2. Create a journal (on paper and/or on your computer) listing the species you are most likely to observe.

3. Record the “firsts” for each species; e.g., first shoots, first flowers, first seed-pods, as appropriate, in your journal.

4. After you have accumulated a number of observations, visit the United States of America National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) website and record the data for each species. The USA-NPN website will have a separate section for the Monarch Watch plants by the 15th of May.

5. Be sure to make a note of the data that has been entered so as to avoid entering the same data at a later date.

This is a great project for classrooms, nature centers, families, and those interested in making additional uses of their Monarch Waystation habitats.

Revised 4-23-2008