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Results hint that Europe may be in for a warm winter.
Do you still have roses in bloom in your English garden? Then you might not be surprised to hear that Europe is experiencing the warmest autumn since Columbus first sailed to America.
Preliminary analysis shows that continental mean temperatures in September and October were 11°C — that's 1.8 °C higher than the long-term average for these months. November was 2.5 °C higher than the average. The results show that 2006 has beaten the 'hottest' autumns of 1772, 1938 and 2000 by about a degree.
Previous research has shown that spring seems to be coming earlier around the world. But autumn climate trends have been generally less well investigated.
That's partly because warm autumns pose less stress on plants and animals than do temperature anomalies in spring, says Annette Menzel, a phenologist at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. But warm autumns come with their own problems.
