Winter Is Getting Warmer - Really
Even though we officially have to wait until March 20th
there is evidence of Spring all over. New leaves are sprouting on my azaleas.
The lilac bushes have impatient buds on all the branches. I see robins hopping
around the neighborhood pecking at the saturated ground for worms. Clumps of
ice are slowly melting, revealing things that have been hidden for months.
Practically everyone I know says the same thing: I’m ready for winter to be
over.
We aren’t the only ones yearning for Spring. Ducks have had
it hard this year. They migrate to find food and nesting places, both of which
become difficult to find when there is an excess of snow and ice. The robins
that have returned, until this week, were pecking away at the snow, trying to
get underneath to find food. Geese were spotted making nests on mounds of snow
and skidding on the underlying ice. It has been some winter.
And yet, the earth has had a warm year. In some areas, it
has been an unseasonably warm winter. The earth has been setting records in the
past dozen years. As temperatures rise, ice melts. Polar bears are losing their ice environment. Islands have
flooded. The oceans have risen. It is a self-perpetuating cycle: as temperatures
rise, carbon dioxide increases and as CO2 increases, temperatures rise. It’s a
complicated situation to understand, especially after an extended period of
snow. So I went to NASA’s website for kids to help make sense of it all: http://climatekids.nasa.gov/climate-change-evidence/
I wonder if the definition of our seasons will be changing
in the future and what is our part in that change? It’s not something to sluff
off because it isn’t only the ducks and geese and polar bears that are
affected, it’s us, too.
Some late-season weather statistics:
Waterfowl react to seasonal changes, too:
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