alt Hacker NewsKyoto cherry blossoms now bloom earlier than at any point in 1,200 years
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I had visited to see the cherry blossoms in 2017 and felt that we were going too early but actually made it for the peak. It’s scary how quickly the dates are shifting. I wonder what impact the earlier blooms have on the trees over the coming years, as this does not seem to be natural.
Global warming or global climate change? No mainstream media is talking about it now.
A dataset curated by humans, spanning over a thousand years, is awe inspiring on its own. The first person to record their observation must have had no idea what they started. Are there others like this?
My fruit trees bloomed later this year. It has been a cold spring in my corner of the Midwest, colder on average and we are dropping below freezing the next few nights :(
It's entirely possible that modern horticultural techniques are resulting in the trees going dormant earlier, accumulating the required chill hours, and then breaking dormancy earlier. It's quite likely that the care of the trees has changed substantially from 1900 onward.
So it's a reformatted version of: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/date-of-the-peak-cherry-t...
Now this is climate science I can get behind.
Don't worry though guys, climate change isn't real. /s
1200 years is a serious timescale, I think humans generally struggle reasoning about long durations or very vast distances. Which leads to them instead postulating how all these other more present, more recent and nearer things can be to blame when what you really need to do is zoom out (in space and/or time).
If you’re not terrified by this then you haven’t thought through the implications.
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Really disappointing first parse of the comments.
My average comment quality is pretty terrible, but these are on par.
Many factors in this. Heat islands from urbanization in Kyoto, different species bred for earlier blooming, etc.
Trees often bloom based on the surrounding climate and conidtions. Warmer bursts in early spring lead to early blossoms.
We have a cherry blossom tree. It bloomed a week earlier than last year. We’re not in Kyoto but I did notice and it’s a bit strange. I also noticed some other blossoming trees that typically bloom for about a week, went green after 3 days.