NEWS ERG student compiles data on climate change — right outside the President’s window! [Japan’s cherry blossoms signal warmest climate in more than 1,000 years]

From the April 4 Wash­ing­ton Post: and devel­oped by  ERG PhD stu­dent Zeke Hausfather:

For more than 1,000 years, emper­ors, aris­to­crats, gov­er­nors and monks have chron­i­cled the flow­er­ing of Japan’s famed cher­ry trees in the city of Kyoto. But bloom dates have shift­ed rad­i­cal­ly ear­li­er in recent decades, a sure sign that the region’s cli­mate is warm­ing and warm­ing fast.

Yasuyu­ki Aono, a pro­fes­sor of envi­ron­men­tal sci­ences at Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture Uni­ver­si­ty, has assem­bled a data set that com­piles blos­som-flow­er­ing dates in Kyoto all the way back to 800 A.D. It shows a sud­den and remark­able change in the past 150 to 200 years.

From rough­ly 800 to 1850, the blos­som flow­er­ing time was fair­ly sta­ble. While the bloom dates bounced around quite a bit from year to year dur­ing April, the long-term aver­age hov­ered between April 10 and April 17 (the 100th to 107th day of the year).

 

Screen Shot 2017-04-05 at 3.56.57 PM Screen Shot 2017-04-05 at 3.59.35 PM

 

(Invert plot to see the Hock­ey Stick!)

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