Climate Change: New York City Now Considered "Subtropical"

Want to go to a nice subtropical location this winter?

Try New York City.  

Springtime in Vermont. It's earlier now than'
it used to be, largely because of climate change
By the way, New York City is now "subtropical"

Yep, back in July, the New York Times reported that the climate classification for the Big Apple was now 

Says the New York Times:

"New York City, after years of being considered a humid continental climate, now sits within the humid subtropical climate zone. The classification requires that summers average above 72 degrees Fahrenheit - which New York's have had since 1927 - and for winter months to stay above 27 degrees Fahrenheit, on average The city has met that requirement for the last five years, despite the occasional cold snap. And the winters are only getting warmer."

Yes, at first glance, this is just an esoteric shift mainly of interest to climate geeks. This climate reclassification, though, is not limited to weather statistics. It reflect in what we notice around us.

The ecosystem has changed due to the Earth's warming. It's noticeable in New York City. It's also noticeable here in Vermont, though nobody is suggesting the Green Mountain State is anything close to subtropical.

As the New York Times points out, you can't exactly plant palmetto trees in Brooklyn and expect them to survive. The Northeast still gets wintertime Arctic blasts, after all.

But people in New York are noticing cherry trees blooming in March, fig trees surviving winters to later bear fruit

As the New York Times notes, crepe myrtles are thriving in New York now. The used to grow no taller than a shrub, because winter cold would nip them. Now, some of them are 20 feet tall. 

The downside to all this is that storms are also more intense in a changing climate, and invasive plants and bugs that used to die off in cold winters survive to cause more damage.

In a grander scheme, ecosystems are now slowly changing everywhere. For instance, southern oaks are creeping northward along the Eastern Seaboard, and so are sugar maples.

In the Mid-Atlantic States, and in the New York metro area, sugar maples are struggling because they need harsh cold to "winter off" before spring arrives. Sugar maples also don't do well in consistently very hot weather, though they're OK during brief heat waves.

Of course, sugar maples are near and dear to us here in Vermont. The Green Mountain State is the nation's top maple syrup producer, and those gorgeous maples are a centerpiece of our storied fall foliage season..

According to a 2016 Maplesource blog article, citing data from UVM's Proctor Maple Research Center, the Vermont maple sugaring season starts on average 8.3 days earlier than it did five decades ago and ends 11.6 days earlier than 50 years ago.

In other words, the maple season is getting shorter as our weather warms. 

Anecdotally, I notice differences in Vermont compared to when I was a kid, also five decades ago. In the spring, daffodils blooms flourish in mid and late April.  We often had to wait until early May to enjoy them years ago. Fall foliage season is mid-October now in the valleys, not the around the first of October, like it was a few decades ago.

It snows more than it used to in the winter, but that snow dissolves in more frequent January and February thaws. I used to be able to count on not sweating through oppressive heat waves after Labor Day. Now, most Septembers feature at least one humid or hot spell. (One such spell is likely during the second half of next week).

The changes happen slowly, and we don't notice them right away. But then, decades later, we find ourselves, quoting an old Talking Heads song: "And you may ask yourself, well/How did I get here?"