L'article du mois (octobre 2019)

TEMPERATURE VARIABILITY BETWEEN 1951 AND 2014 IN GERMANY AND ASSOCIATED EVOLUTION OF APPLE BLOOM ONSET

Sarah-Sophie WEIL, Albin ULLMANN, Pierre CAMBERLIN. Climatologie, vol. 15 (2018)

Apple tree bloom onset in Germany has advanced by 2 days/decade in 1951-2014 and by 3 days/decade in 1988-2014, behaving similarly in respect to its evolution since 1951 and its sensitivity to temperature to other species’ phenological spring phases. The evolution however was not linear; by conducting a split moving-window dissimilarity analysis (SMWDA) we were able to detect the “break-period” 1987-1989 which coincides with a breakpoint that has been identified in the phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

We observed distinct spatial patterns with apple bloom advancing from southwest to northeast and, most interestingly, a longitudinal gradient in the trend of apple bloom onset revealed by a probabilistic principal components analysis (PPCA). In the period of 1951-2014, plants located in the east displayed a much stronger trend (-16.53 days on average) than those in the western part of the country (-6.74 days on average). This pattern seems to be linked to patterns in temperature which is highly correlated to apple bloom onset (best one predictor model: mean temperature March to May, R² = 0.82, -6 days/°C): the coldest regions exhibit the strongest warming trends and the greatest advances in apple bloom onset.
Keywords: Phenology, Germany, climate change, apple bloom, breakpoint.