where climate change shows up
Written on 5/30/2006
Some places have gotten warmer, a few cooler. What should worry people — farmers and the customers, you know, people who eat — is the change in hardiness zones, ie, where you can grow stuff.
What if you can’t grow your cash crop because it needs chill hours it’s no longer getting (peaches, apples, cherries, etc.)? It’s not like you can move a region to follow it’s climate: if the weather we rely on to grow wheat and corn moves north, what happens then? Half of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina used to be in Zone 7: now perhaps a third of it or less. Is it any wonder hurricanes are retaining their sub-tropical power to far north, if the sub-tropical conditions are preceding them?
[link]
Filed in: observations.
Yep. And it’s not hard to notice — lantana used to be an annual in Atlanta, but now it’s, for all intents and purposes, a perennial, as it never gets cold enough to kill its roots.