Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 4-10-2024

Abstract

It’s hard to ignore the changes in the weather we’ve been experiencing. Winters aren’t as cold as they used to be, spring is arriving earlier and fall later, and when it rains, it pours. These changes reflect long-term shifts in the climate. Since 1970, the average annual temperature in the Northeast has risen more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature increase is greater than what has been observed for the contiguous United States (2.5 degrees) and the global average (1.7 degrees), but less than for Alaska (4.5 degrees). Depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, climate models predict that the region will experience an additional temperature increase of between 2 and 8 degrees by the end of the century.

As temperatures throughout the world continue to rise, a common pattern is that colder entities are warming faster than warmer ones. For example, Earth’s poles are warming faster than the equator, winters are warming more rapidly than summers, and minimum temperatures are increasing faster than maximum temperatures. Because a characteristic of the Northeast’s climate has been historically cold and snowy winters, a loss of cold conditions is one of the region’s greatest changes.

Predicting the impacts of these changes on forests is complex. Some tree species, in some locations, will benefit, while others will face declines in health and population. For the most part, trees do not die of a single cause, but rather succumb to the combined impact of multiple stressors. A challenge of climate change – and one of the reasons its specific effects can be hard to predict – is that it acts as a “threat multiplier.” What this means is that changes in temperature and precipitation can exacerbate other stressors on trees such as insects, diseases, competition from invasive plants, nutrient limitations, and deer browsing.

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