climate

Birds are singing in the trees

For the rest of the century, according to climate change experts, we will experience warmer and wetter winters and hotter, drier summers.
These changes will allow us to spend longer outdoors in our gardens and parks in the summer. But the changes will also have an impact on plants and animals.
Plants such as lavender will thrive as they can cope with heavy rain in the winter and periods of drought in the summer. But spring bulbs will be affected as the lack of winter frost will disrupt their flowering times.
These may seem like small changes but they have important effects. We are already seeing birds laying eggs and having young earlier in the year, and differences of as little as one or two weeks can mean insects that the chicks need for food are not available.
The changing availability of insects is also related to the fact that flowers and plants are either growing earlier or later than expected. Frost, which many plants use as a stimulant to growth, is becoming less common and so plants either don’t grow or are unable to flower at the correct time.
As a result some of the plants, animals and insects that we are used to seeing in Hull’s parks and gardens will no longer survive locally. Instead they will move further north where the climate becomes more like ours is today.
Following this trend, plants, animals and insects from the south of England or mainland Europe will start to appear in Hull.
The milder winters and warmer summers also mean that growing seasons increase and so some insects will be around longer and some plants may even flower twice in a season.
The changes in our gardens and local parks are due to the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

To find out more about how climate change is affecting our plants and animals then visit:
Royal Horticultural Society www.rhs.org.uk
Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Assembly www.yhassembly.gov.uk
For information on local plants, animals and insects visit www.hull.ac.uk/HBP

Got a question about climate change? Email climate.change@hullcc.gov.uk or visit our web site at www.hullcc.gov.uk and click on Environment.