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planthardiness.ars.usda.gov
The updated "Plant Hardiness Zone Map" includes state-by-state details like this one of Iowa. Des Moines, for example, used to be in zone 5a, meaning the lowest temperature on average was between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Now it's 5b, which has a coldest temperature of 10 to 15 degrees below zero.
A federal "plant hardiness" map used by millions of gardeners was updated Wednesday for the first time in two decades, revealing many areas where the coldest day of the year isn't as cold anymore.
"Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas," the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a statement announcing the update.
The map, which is online and allows users to type in zip codes, uses 26 temperature zones, each in 5 degree Fahrenheit increments, to show planting conditions across the U.S.
For example, Des Moines, Iowa, used to be in zone 5a, meaning the lowest temperature on average was between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Now it's 5b, which has a coldest temperature of 10 to 15 degrees below zero.
A key change in the update is using average temperature records from 1976-2005 instead of the earlier 1974-1986 span. The nation's average temperature from 1976 to 2005 was two-thirds of a degree warmer than for the old time period, according to statistics at the National Climatic Data Center.
"It's important to recognize that the plant hardiness map represents the extreme coldest temperature a location experiences each year, averaged over a period of years," Chris Daly, an Oregon State University researcher whose climate group created the map for the USDA, told msnbc.com. "So, it is really an extreme cold map, if you will, and doesn't necessarily track average temperatures.
"That said, the more recent averaging period has generally caused a one 5-degree half-zone shift to the warmer side over much of the U.S., especially the central and eastern U.S."
"The higher quality of the map is reflected most in hilly and mountainous areas, where we have both better measurements and a better mapping technology," Daly added.
USDA Undersecretary Catherine Woteki called it "the most sophisticated Plant Hardiness Zone Map yet for the United States" but made no mention of climate change.
USDA spokeswoman Kim Kaplan distanced the map from global warming issues. Even though much of the country is in warmer zones, she said, 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 Wolfe, professor of plant and soil ecology in Cornell University's Department of Horticulture, said the USDA was being too cautious.
"At a time when the 'normal' climate has become a moving target, this revision of the hardiness zone 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 told The Associated Press.
Another and even more dramatic sign of global warming in the plant world is that spring is arriving earlier in the year, Wolfe said.
In 2003, the last time an update was attempted, the USDA was embroiled in controversy and shelved the map, which it had contracted the American Horticultural Society to prepare.
The society went ahead with its own map, and emphasized what it felt was a connection to global warming.
The Arbor Day Foundation also issued its own hardiness guide, which also had warmer climate zones and was based on more recent temperature data. The new map is very similar to the one the group adopted six years ago, said Arbor Day Foundation Vice President Woodrow Nelson.
"We got a lot of comments that the 1990 map wasn't accurate anymore," Nelson said. "It's been a long time coming," he said of the new map.
Nelson, who lives in Lincoln, Neb., where the zone warmed to a 5b. Nelson said he used to "a solid 4" but now he's got Japanese maples and fraser firs in his yard — trees that shouldn't survive in a zone 4.
Msnbc.com's Miguel Llanos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
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Notice that they talk about gardeners and not farmers. Most gardeners live in the city. Most farmers live in the country.
Also note that they are not talking about rising high temperatures. They are saying that the temperature at night is not cooling as much as it used to.
Now let's recognize the differences between cities and country. Cities have a lot of concrete and asphalt, a lot of buildings and houses. All man made structures that retain heat and radiate it back out more slowly than dirt, grass and trees.
What is being described here is not climate change but UHI, Urban Heat Island effect.
My city has 60,000 people but instead of having suburbs just outside the city limits it has farms and ranches. It takes just minutes to drive from the city to the country. It is very easy to notice the change in temperature between the city and the country. The city is always warmer at night than the country.
Many people that work in my city live in the country and notice the same thing each day driving to work in the morning and back to home in the evening.
Ever had a cold front move through in the fall just as the sun goes down? Notice how if you lean against a building the building is still warm? UHI.
Why does a desert get so hot in the day but the temperature fall to freezing at night? The sand is not good at retaining heat. But sand is not the same as asphalt and concrete. Plus throw in the heat from car engines and running air conditioner compressors and it is easy to see why city living gardeners have noticed it doesn't get as cool at night.
Many of the weather stations that are used to gather data are no longer sited properly. They don't meet the standard used to insure proper operation. Buildings, parking lots, A/C units, even barbeque pits have been photographed being located too close to these weather stations. So it is no surprise that they show warmer temperatures than they did in the past. But rural stations do not show the same increase in temperature.
This change in temperature may be man made but it is caused by what man builds on the ground not because of what he puts in the air.
I live in the country. Most people in the country have gardens. On what do you base your information? Your whole post reads like an opinion piece rather than one written from knowledge. You cannot sit in an office an pretend to know about how we who are HUNDREDS of miles from the nearest city are having to adjust our planting and harvesting times and how we notice wildlife habits changing also.
Climate change is not political...now it is a fact of life and you are having to admit that there is such thing, but you want to blame it on concrete? Give me a break!
I rather be the wrong one about the causes of climate change b/c if you are, we all are toast!
Ek, why in the world would temperature affect gardeners and not farmers?? Makes absolutely zero sense! They both use the seasons and therefore temperature to plant different harvests or plants. It doesn't matter if they're talking about high or low temps, the point is the world IS warming and practically every study is confirming that notion!
I understand what you're talking about with cities being warmer into the night than the surrounding suburbs or countryside. And, I'm pretty sure the scientists doing this study, along with every other climate study, realize that difference also.
You're reasoning for desserts having such a broad temperature range between day and night is wrong. It has little to do with the sand retaining heat. Instead it is mostly due to the fact of the area having a low moisture content or a low humidity point. With the dessert having a low humidity it's easier for the sun to heat the area because it takes more energy to heat an area containing water than an area without. Thus, when the sun sets the heat that was built up is therefore lost to the upper atmosphere.
And for the ump-teenth time, a higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is a major reason for our planets rising temperature!
Are we back to global warming again? Just last week they were calling it climate change. They want to be taken seriously, but can't even get their stories straight from one week to the next.
Gloryhound, it is you (and your like) who can't seem to get your story straight and thus can't be taken seriously. Actually credible information based upon the facts can be found at the following locations listed below. Two of which are videos of some of the top US military officials and what they know is happening based upon the evidence at hand. Educate yourself on the subject of climate change/global warming (or whatever you wish to call it) and get back to us.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
http://climate.nasa.gov/
http://www.climate.gov/#climateWatch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfobHy0a9CU&feature=context&context=C3d2831eUDOEgsToPDskIXzjWSzTQcozJU2FF2kGlX
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyqUR6GNnYU&feature=plcp&context=C3d2831eUDOEgsToPDskIXzjWSzTQcozJU2FF2kGlX
Comment 1 by "economy killer" sounds very confident and knowledgeable, but is completely ignorant of the realities. The science is clear: global warming is not an artifact of UHI. This was confirmed most recently by the UC Berkeley study, done by a former climate skeptic, which found that global temperatures are in fact increasing and are not an artifact of UHI. Bet you know who pays economy killer to post this BS.
climate change is NOT cause by carbon emissions its not possible. Not in the least bit. IT just doesn't make any friggin sense. Pollution itself is bad but I challenge anyone to show causality between increases carbon emissions and global temperature. There are many other factors that contribute to global temperature more than that. Again I am against pollution. I am definitely for finding alternative forms of energy. But I will never go screaming about global warming. It's a natural process. Just no way. Is the water polluted? Is the air noxious. I can't dispute that. But don't tell me carbon somehow raises the temperature of the air.
Jose, The carbon emmision absorbs the radiated energy from the earth, so it doesn't escape into space. This absorbed energy increases the average temperature. A little increase makes that blanket a bit harder for the radiated photons to go through. My office mate in the 70's, while we were working for the DOD, did this study which was commisioned by them, to see what the effect was. We were clueless until the results were analyzed. If you look at the cores taken from Antartica, Greenland etc. which were laid down for thousands of years ago and compare the carbon in the air to the temperature of the earth at that time period by the ocean level you will see that there is a direct comparisson. Whether it is man made of not is another discussion.
U.C. Berkeley is hardly a place where credible non-partisan studies originate. What EK was talking about is a reality. The global warming is a normal trend, if you look through the planets history. Hell, even recent history. Drought, flood cycles. It is just more noticeable now, like everything else, because of instant information transfer across the globe. Cities are a huge problem. So are agricorporate factory farms. Brian is probably the best informed on this topic. And as he even says, is it manmade? If so, then how does that account for the core tests? Not a hell of a lot of chevys running around in the paleolithic age. The global warming thing made Al Gore rich, now he's even richer working for Apple, a company who creates products that have incredible amounts of toxic material built into them, so he is hardly someone to lend credence to. Does the temp seem to be shifting around the globe? It appears to be, but more as a normal operation of the cycles of the planet than to our best efforts to make the planet as hostile to living organisms as possible.
Wow, D, you are so incredibly misinformed its ridiculous. Here is a video that dispells all of your assertions and answers your questions. I suggest you educate yourself with the facts before posting anything in the future. Nothing about the current climate warming is natural.
http://fora.tv/2011/11/18/Dan_Miller_Boom_or_Bust
I watched the segment, Rightly, and it is an opinion piece. I could watch another one where someone else would dispute the opinions in this segment. Just because someone sounds like they know what they are talking about doesn't always equate to they do.
Not true D McMillen, its a piece based solely upon facts, unlike the fossil fuel industry--whose misinformation (which you either mistakenly have bought in to, or even, perhaps, actively perpetuate?) provides no facts in support of their assertions. I've provided several links in this thread to sites (NASA, NOAA, etc.) with actual credibility, all of which provide the facts and have no other motivations. Can you say the same about where you get your information from?
Fact is, based upon the historical record, we're currently in an interglacial warm period which would (at some point in the coming millenia) have reverted back into an ice age. The temp and CO2 historical record correspond very closely over millions of years. At no point, going back millions of years, was the CO2 level ever at 390 ppm, as it is right now. The ice-ages and inter-glacial eras ranged from 180 ppm to 300 ppm (max), and the transitions between them lasted tens of millenia. The transition we are going through now is happening in decades, far faster than at any point going back at least 15 million years, and this transition is going from an inter-glacial phase to a possible ice-free state. The on-set of the next ice age, which would have come within two or more millenia, will not be occurring, because the conditions for it to occur have been altered--by us. Instead we are creating a world where ice will be (depending on how far we continue to go) either just severely diminished or completely absent from the planet.
Individual and Clark,
I have a B.S. in Earth Science and a Masters in Environmental Science and I can assure you E-killer is pretty right on.
Data in the hands of Psuedo-scientists who are actually lobbyists for research firms is often flawed and leaves out key concepts that most scientists recognise as common sense. You don't get money from congress unless you tell them "we're all gonna die, here, look at my data".
Climate change blather IS political and it is tied to companies and Colleges soaking money from government (no-one else would give them money to research or grow corn for fuel that nature has already processed for us). You're living in fantasy land if you can't see the truth behind the whole movement.
P.S. Clark,
Your "science is clear" comment reveals your deep-seeded ignorant bias on the subject. Seriously, you don't know what you're talking about.
Sorry, Tod, but your post throws up some red flags. At least to me it does. First off, most people don't start out by throwing their credentials around. I've been on these blogs for awhile now and you just don't see that very often. It usually starts out by either agreeing or countering someone's post, not claiming you have high standing credentials.
Secondly, you'd understand that most of the money for research grants don't normally come from congress. Unless, of course, it's a project initiated by the government. It normally comes from universities or other private institutions.
Yes, climate change is political to a point. That point being that changes are going to have to be made in manufacturing of vehicles (and their mileage ratings), everyday products, pretty much all aspects in order to cut down emissions. Also more pressure is going to be put on large businesses to recycle more and also to be more streamlined in their power consumption and consumption of goods in general. I can foresee governments implementing things such as having a certain number of trees or plants on your property to help adsorb CO2. I can also see the government putting regulations into place for all things that run on fuel such as lawnmowers, tractors, edgers and basically anything that hasn't been regulated very much in the past. Eventually I see many governments putting child birth regulations into place as they've done in China. I'm NOT saying these things will happen only that if things begin to get 'extreme' then these actions might happen.
And lastly, if you do in fact have the credentials you claim then you'd know climate experts have already included the urban heat island effect in their list of variables. Plus, including relative humidity, elevation, wind speed, etc in your calculations would give you a 'real' temperature. This also includes why there's such a wide temperature spectrum in the dessert. Yes, the terrain and vegetation of the area are things to consider, but you should know those aren't the only things to consider.
I just find it hard to accept that someone with your supposed credentials is denying what is obviously happening to our planet and the reason(s) behind it.
Garrett,
"It normally comes from universities or other private institutions."
This the only part of your post that actally applies to what I posted. So I have a question for you; Who do you think universities (private and public) mainly lobby to for monies?
The rest of your post is opinion. Climate change science (specifically CO2 and global warming, which are what is driving the politcs right now) is far from established, depite your claims to the "obvious". For goodness sake, even the founder of The Weather Channel says the CO2 blather is nonsense.
Here is what I know and have observed over the last 30 years. When I was a kid, we were sledding from late November until mid March. Now, we are lucky to get enough snow for my kids to sled a couple times a year. When I was a kid, our lawn would brown out at the end of the summer and turn green again with the spring rains. Right now, end of January, our lawn is green again. And growing. When I was a kid, we did not have 14 mega weather events, nor did we have tornadoes in January. The climate is changing, mankind is causing it and if we don't do something about, along with massive pollution mankind continues to produce, this planet will not survive.
Bela..., What exactly does Al Gore have to do with climate change, other than the fact he has tried to bring it to the public's attention?
Al Gore is just a Red Herring, used by the fossil fuel industry (and the power players behind it) to distract people like you from the truth. Without Gore, the Earth's climate would still be changing due to man's interference with its chemical content. Climate change will affect everyone, no matter what your political leanings are.
See post #1.5 for directions to sites with factual information.
Of course they are going to say the map is not a good instument. It shows that there is no global warming. If it showed what they want to hear. Then it would be an excellent instrument. Notice that they cant even use the world global warming because noone believes it. Now they call it Climate change. Really is it news that the climates changes??? Of course it does. WHo who have thought the goverment could make money off this by taxing us.
I want to create a tax for day and night change. Notice how it is daytime longer than others? Well that is obvioulsy poisons from people and animals. This is as ridiculous as people wanting to tax us for Climate change.
Great news. Fewer hard freezes. Less crop damage. More food production.
Only to a point. After that point the ground ph becomes to low for a number of plants which in turn causes them to die. Yes, plants take in CO2 then turn it into O2. BUT, when the concentration of CO2 becomes to high it actually becomes toxic for the plant(s) thus, and again, kills them.
So, we might not be able to stop what is happening or reverse it but it would be wise to slow it down as much as we can.
OK, this is not an argument for or against Climate change, this is an argument for math. If anyone has taken a statistics course, you would know that a good sample size is 30. If you look, they are comparing 13 years worth of data, to 30 years worth. It is not a good comparison, and thus should not be used to confirm nor deny climate change, but just what they did, show a better representation of the temperatures, and coldest temperatures at that. It is not avg temperature, it does not show high temperatures. You could make a map that showed the coldest highs or warmest highs and say it shows one thing or another. The Cornell people are misleading the public in their statements about the map. Please note, I am talking ONLY about the map, not about climate change!
Actually the data on world temperature's is a far longer timeline going back 800,000 years in ice cores and even further (millions of years) in seabed sediment cores. We do have more detailed monitoring today, but that dosn't negate the well documented information available to us historically.
I've already posted links to sites with the facts, but here is another link to the ratio of record cold temperatures to record-warm temperatures.
http://capitalclimate.blogspot.com/2012/01/mid-winter-2012-temperature-update-heat.html