来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2022年2月2日
Seen any unseasonably early daffodils showing their faces yet? UK spring flowers are opening nearly a month earlier than they did before the mid-1980s, due to climate change.
见过任何反常提早开放的水仙花吗？由于气候变化，英国春季花卉的开放时间比20世纪80年代中期之前提前了近一个月。
That is the conclusion of a study of nearly 420,000 observations of the first flowering date of 406 plants from a UK citizen science project called Nature’s Calendar.
这是英国一项名为“自然日历”的公民科学项目对406种植物首次开花日期的近42万次观察得出的结论。
It has records dating back to 1753 from gardeners and naturalists, as well as bodies such as the UK’s Royal Meteorological Society. “It’s probably the longest such record in the world, certainly the largest,” says Ulf Büntgen at the University of Cambridge.
它的记录可以追溯到1753年，有园艺家和博物学家的记录，还有英国皇家气象学会等机构的记录。“这可能是世界上最长的记录，当然也是最大的记录，”剑桥大学的Büntgen说。
He and his team found that plants were opening their flowers 26 days earlier on average in the years after 1986 than they did before. They picked that year as it was the midpoint in the data set – where they had about the same number of observations before and after – because there were many more recent records than earlier ones.
他和团队发现，在1986年之后的年份里，植物开花的平均时间比以前提前了26天。他们选择1986年，因为这是数据集中的中点——开花在这一年前后的观察次数大致相同——因为最近的记录比以前的记录多得多。
The analysis included records of all plants, whatever time of year they flower, but most of them bloomed in spring. “It is likely that the influence of climate change will be greater for spring-flowering plants, where the usual warmer temperatures that would trigger flowering starts earlier,” says a spokesperson for the UK’s Royal Horticultural Society.
该分析包括了所有植物的记录，无论它们在一年中的什么时候开花，但大多数都是在春天开花。英国皇家园艺学会的一位发言人说：“可能气候变化对春季开花植物的影响会更大，因为促使花开的气温变暖会提前。”
There was a bigger advance in the dates of the first blooms for smaller plants, with those less than 20 centimetres high flowering an average of 32 days earlier in the years after 1986 than they had historically.
小型植物第一次开花的时间提前了更多，在1986年之后的年份里，那些小于20厘米高的植物的开花时间比历史上平均提前了32天。
In any year, flower opening times were closely correlated with the average temperature of the months from January to April. “If it’s warmer, it’s an earlier onset. If it’s cooler, it’s a later one,” says Büntgen. The average maximum temperature across those four months rose by 1.1°C, comparing the period from 1950 to 1986 with the years after 1986.
在任何一年中，开花时间与1-4月的平均气温密切相关。“如果天气变暖，开花时间就会提前。如果天气较凉，那就晚一点，”Büntgen说。与从1950年到1986年相比，1986年之后的年份这四个月的平均最高气温上升了1.1°C。
The shift could hurt insects, birds and other wildlife that have evolved to synchronise with the flowering of certain plants, says Büntgen. “One degree doesn’t sound like a lot. But this shows the response of an ecosystem; this translates into a month earlier flowering.”
Büntgen说，这种变化可能会伤害昆虫、鸟类和其他已经进化到与某些植物开花同步的野生动物。“一摄氏度听起来并不多。但这显示了生态系统的反应；这意味着提前一个月开花。”