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Flowering phenological changes in relation to climate change in Hungary

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Abstract

The importance of long-term plant phenological time series is growing in monitoring of climate change impacts worldwide. To detect trends and assess possible influences of climate in Hungary, we studied flowering phenological records for six species (Convallaria majalis, Taraxacum officinale, Syringa vulgaris, Sambucus nigra, Robinia pseudoacacia, Tilia cordata) based on phenological observations from the Hungarian Meteorological Service recorded between 1952 and 2000. Altogether, four from the six examined plant species showed significant advancement in flowering onset with an average rate of 1.9–4.4 days per decade. We found that it was the mean temperature of the 2–3 months immediately preceding the mean flowering date, which most prominently influenced its timing. In addition, several species were affected by the late winter (January–March) values of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index. We also detected sporadic long-term effects for all species, where climatic variables from earlier months exerted influence with varying sign and little recognizable pattern: the temperature/NAO of the previous autumn (August-December) seems to influence Convallaria, and the temperature/precipitation of the previous spring (February–April) has some effect on Tilia flowering.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the grant of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA 81979), project of “Establishing the method of satellite phenological observations for ecosystems response to global change detection.” Thanks to Prof. Filzmoser, Annamária Lehoczky, and Ákos Németh for providing valuable comments and suggestions on the manuscript. The work of Bálint Czúcz was supported by the János Bolyai research fellowship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Institute of Biology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, 1117, Budapest, Hungary

    Barbara Szabó

  2. Institute of Ecology and Botany, Centre for Ecological Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Alkotmány út 2-4, 2163, Vácrátót, Hungary

    Barbara Szabó & Bálint Czúcz

  3. Hungarian Meteorological Service, Kitaibel Pál u. 1, 1024, Budapest, Hungary

    Enikő Vincze

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  1. Barbara Szabó
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Correspondence to Barbara Szabó.

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Szabó, B., Vincze, E. & Czúcz, B. Flowering phenological changes in relation to climate change in Hungary. Int J Biometeorol 60, 1347–1356 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-015-1128-1

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