Spokane7
27°
January 26, 2012 in Nation/World
Global warming hits the garden
Warming enables northern regions to grow more varieties
WASHINGTON – Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden. The color-coded map of planting zones often seen on the back of seed packets is being updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century.
It’s the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised the official guide for the nation’s 80 million gardeners, and much has changed. Nearly entire states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Texas, are in warmer zones.
The new guide, unveiled Wednesday at the National Arboretum, arrives as many home gardeners are receiving their seed catalogs and dreaming of lush flower beds in the spring.
It reflects a new reality: The coldest day of the year isn’t as cold as it used to be, so some plants and trees can now survive farther north.
“People who grow plants are well aware of the fact that temperatures have gotten more mild throughout the year, particularly in the wintertime,” said Boston University biology professor Richard Primack. “There’s a lot of things you can grow now that you couldn’t grow before.”
He said the giant fig tree in his suburban Boston yard stands as an example: “People don’t think of figs as a crop you can grow in the Boston area. You can do it now.”
The new guide also uses better weather data and offers more interactive technology. For example, gardeners using the online version can enter their ZIP code and get the exact average coldest temperature.
Also, for the first time, calculations include more detailed factors such as prevailing winds, the presence of nearby bodies of water, the slope of the land, and the way cities are hotter than suburbs and rural areas.
The map carves the U.S. into 26 zones based on five-degree temperature increments. The old 1990 map mentions 34 U.S. cities in its key. On the 2012 map, 18 of those, including Honolulu; St. Louis; Des Moines, Iowa; St. Paul, Minn.; and Fairbanks, Alaska, are in warmer zones.
Those differences matter in deciding what to plant.
For example, Des Moines used to be in zone 5a, meaning the lowest temperature on average was between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees. Now it’s 5b, which has a lowest temperature of 10 to 15 degrees below zero. Jerry Holub, manager of a Des Moines plant nursery, said folks there might now be able to grow passionflower.
Griffin, Ga., used to be in zone 7b, where the coldest day would average between 5 and 10 degrees. But the city is now in zone 8a, averaging a coldest day of 10 to 15 degrees. So growing bay laurel becomes possible. It wasn’t recommended on the old map.
“It is great that the federal government is catching up with what the plants themselves have known for years now: The globe is warming and it is greatly influencing plants (and animals),” Stanford University biology professor Terry Root wrote in an email.
The changes come too late to make this year’s seed packets, but they will be in next year’s, said George Ball, chairman and CEO of the seed company W. Atlee Burpee, which puts the maps on packages of perennials, not annuals. But Ball said many of his customers already know what can grow in their own climate and how it has warmed.
“Climate change, which has been in the air for a long time, is not big news to gardeners,” he said.
Mark Kaplan, a New York meteorologist who helped create the 1990 map, said the latest version clearly shows warmer zones migrating north. Other experts agreed.
The 1990 map was based on temperatures from 1974 to 1986, the new map from 1976 to 2005. The nation’s average temperature from 1976 to 2005 was two-thirds of a degree higher than it was during the old time period, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
USDA spokeswoman Kim Kaplan, who was part of the map team, repeatedly tried to distance the new zones on the map from global warming. She said that while much of the country is in warmer zones, the map “is simply not a good instrument” to demonstrate climate change because it is based on just the coldest days of the year.
David W. Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell University, said that the USDA is being too cautious and that the map plainly reflects warming.
The revised map “gives us a clear picture of the ‘new normal’ and will be an essential tool for gardeners, farmers and natural resource managers as they begin to cope with rapid climate change,” Wolfe said in an email.
9 die in Afghan protests 
WSU Text-to-Win Contest 
Enter to win tickets to see Adam Carolla at the Knitting Factory 
Adopt A Pet- Help save lives of creatures, large and small. 
polistra on January 26 at 7:29 a.m.
More of the usual criminal fraudulent crap. Some areas get warmer sometimes and some areas get colder sometimes.
That’s all you can validly and truly say.
Let’s take a local look.
In the NCDC set of climate divisions, Spokane is on the boundary between Washington 9 and Washington 10.
Here’s the century-long temperature pattern for Wash 9:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=tmp&month=9&year=2011&filter=12&state=45&div=10
Here’s the century-long temp record for Wash 10:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=tmp&month=9&year=2011&filter=12&state=45&div=9
Wash 9 shows a warm period in the 90’s, followed by a return to the average; looks like it’s heading down from there.
Wash 10 shows a steady downward trend for the whole century.
Please note: These graphs are from NOAA, which is part of the US government. These graphs are NOT from Shell Oil or BP or ConocoPhillips or Halliburton or Texaco or the Koch Brothers.
libmark on January 26 at 7:58 a.m.
You’re right, Polistra. Some place get warmer, some get colder, much as your links show. But this isn’t about just about zones 9 and 10 in Washington. Expand your scope a bit and you’ll find a national and global pattern that shows a clearly defined trend upwards. And where does this data come from? From a Koch Bros. funded study: http://www.examiner.com/la-in-los-angeles/koch-brothers-funded-climate-research-backfires
Here’s the distillation of the Koch funded research: http://berkeleyearth.org/analysis/
Jeffrey_Grey on January 26 at 8:29 a.m.
Hmm… So that N.O.A.A. site is authoritative is it?
Okay.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/ (That’s the title page to the data pages you cite.)
You can also check out the whole nation (versus just cherry-picking one of only two states with below normal temperatures; WA and OR) and see that of the all 50 states, temperatures in two were below normal, at or near normal in 11 and above or much above normal in the other 37.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2011/13
Maybe it’s those facts that form the basis for changing the temperature zones - and not just to service some “criminally fraudlent crap” that happens to disagree with your partisan agenda?
JBlim on January 26 at 8:41 a.m.
Deniers up in arms over planting zone revisions. Priceless.
The_Seer on January 26 at 9:33 a.m.
pollstra: This region was supposed to get cooler and wetter under most climate change models. You actually weaken your argument in denial of global warming by relying on changes trending towards cooler average temperatures in those zones.
When I was a child around here it would regularly dip below -0F almost every winter. Sometimes the temps would dip to -20 and more. Can you recall the last time we experienced those periods of cold?
I wouldn’t be digging too many holes to plant fig trees, though. All it takes is a single winter of what used to be normal winter temps and they’ll all die. I have begun planting varieties of fruits and veggies more suited for cooler, wetter springs and early summers.
liberal_in_right_wing_land on January 26 at 9:49 a.m.
Climate change deniers are just proof of people not able to think for themselves and are just doing whatever they are told by Fox News and right wing radio.
Must really kill these people that the Tea Party’s main sugar daddies, the Koch Brothers, funded a study to prove climate change was false, only to be proved wrong and the study showed climate change was real. Ouch, that hurts.
valleyman on January 26 at 10:13 a.m.
@liberal: It would be so refreshing if you could write a rebuttal that didn’t include the words “Koch” “tea party” or “Fox News.”
of those who post on here in opposition to you, don’t bring up these nor do they frequently say things like “Soros,” “General Electric,” “Progressive,” or “MSNBC”
Time to show that you really have what I believe you do upstairs and begin debating. You are better than this…
liberal_in_right_wing_land on January 26 at 10:35 a.m.
valleyman, I think you need to go re-read some of my past posts…..I can’t even remember the last time I said Fox News or Koch Brothers. I say the Tea Party a lot, but that was because I thought your conservatives like that…..are you now trying to back away from the Tea Party freaks?
Also, yes, most posters on the right LOVE saying Soros (I think we liberals turned that into a drinking game on here), and no you righties don’t say progressives, but you love saying liberals, dumbocrats, democants and other stupid things like that, maybe you need to open up your eyes a little bit more and read everything, not just scan over some posts.
So Valleyman, I am sure you are smarter than that stupid post you just posted, so how about instead of attacking me for using phrases that support my argument, why don’t you try to attack the argument itself…..OH THAS RIGHT…..you can’t really argue that the Koch Brothers self funded climate change study came out to saying climate change was real, can you? You cant really argue that most people on the right are just spouting untrue things they hear on TV and radio and never have anything to back them up. Sorry, I didn’t post a link supporting my Koch Brothers funded climate change study because libmark already did above.
Try arguing the facts, not arguing with the posters, makes you look silly and petty.
peacemonger on January 26 at 11:44 a.m.
It certainly has been a drier and warmer winter in Spokane. I do believe that the world (on average) is getting warmer.