CLIMATIC VARIABILITY, PLANT PHENOLOGY, AND NORTHERN UNGULATES

Abstract

Models of climate change predict that global temperatures and precipitation will increase within the next century, with the most pronounced changes occurring in northern latitudes and during winter. A large-scale atmospheric phenomenon, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), is a strong determinant of both interannual variation and decadal trends in temperatures and precipitation during winter in northern latitudes, and its recent persistence in one extreme phase may be a substantial component of increases in global temperatures. Hence, we investigated the influences of large-scale climatic variability on plant phenology and ungulate population ecology by incorporating the NAO in statistical analyses of previously published data on: (1) the timing of flowering by plants in Norway, and (2) phenotypic and demographic variation in populations of northern ungulates. We analyzed 137 time series on plant phenology for 13 species of plants in Norway spanning up to 50 yr (44 ± 0.5 yr, mean ± 1 se) and 39 time seri...