Warmer Weather – nature’s winners and losers

Many native plants, insects, and sea creatures have benefitted from the recent warm weather the UK has been experiencing. There’s also been an increase in visitors from warmer climes. Some crops and freshwater species have, however, suffered from the lack of rainfall through spring and summer.

This winter’s copious rainfall meant soils were moist leading into the warm spring and even warmer summer and therefore this year’s growing season has been excellent. Wildflowers such as yellow rattle have flourished in meadows and orchids such as the bee-wing have thrived. This year’s crop of blackberries, damsons, and rowan berries should be abundant thanks to the good start to the year for these plants.

The wet winter weather this year meant that some crops such as oil seed rape may not have developed the deep roots they need to get them through a dry summer. The thunderstorms that have interspersed the warm summer have knocked over some barley and bean crops but it is not a widespread problem. The dry spells and warm temperatures have led to a bumper hay harvest. The crops are now ripening in the fields and the early start to summer enables the farmers to harvest at the moment of peak quality.

Warmer weather means warmer waters and they have brought many jellyfish to UK coasts often followed by leatherback turtles. There have been 2 rare sightings of humpback whales in the Irish Sea but the warmer waters seem to have driven away the basking sharks which are usually plentiful in this area. So far there have been only 40 sightings compared with 152 this time last year.

Insects including butterflies, moths, dragonflies, damselflies, bumblebees, and hoverflies have been thriving in the warm dry weather. Wasps however are down in numbers in many parts of the UK probably because many queens died in the cold springs of 2012 and 2013.

Source: The Observer July 2014