Early cherry blossoms blooms Japanese evidence of climate change

Tokyo: Cherry blossoms in Japan are opening and reaching full bloom at a hastened pace this year as a result of a warm spell.

Late March temperatures have surged 4.5 degrees higher than average, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The blossoms, locally known as sakura, are already in full bloom in Tokyo, where temperatures exceeded 20 degrees this week, drawing hundreds of people to the capital's Imperial Palace park to observe the mature clusters of delicate pink flowers.

In parts of the north-eastern Tohoku region, where the season for cherry blossoms typically begins in early to mid-April, onlookers are surprised that the cherry trees have already started flowering.

Read the Melbourne Age story - “Cherry blossoms out early in warm Japan.”

'Record-crushing' October keeps world on track for heat pinnacle

I

t was Earth’s warmest October ever recorded and it wasn’t even close. The record-shattering month was right in step with most of the preceding months in 2015 — which is positioned to easily rank as the warmest year on record.

New data from the Japan Meteorological Agency and NASA show that the planet obliterated October records established just last year.  October 2015 out-baked October 2014 by 0.34 degrees (0.19 Celsius) and 0.32 degrees (0.18 Celsius) in JMA and NASA’s analyses, respectively.

And these records are breaking records.

The planet’s temperature departure from the long-term average of 1.04 Celsius in October is the greatest of any month ever recorded by NASA.  It marked the first time a monthly temperature anomaly exceeded 1 degrees Celsius in records dating back to 1880.  The previous largest anomaly was 0.97 Celsius from January, 2007.

Read The Washington Post story - “Record-crushing October keeps Earth on track for hottest year in 2015.”