The new Greenwave project for schoolchildren aims to measure whether spring has sprung early because of climate change, writes Ronan McGarvey
Where does spring in Ireland begin? Schoolchildren from across the island are conducting valuable experiments to provide the answer to that question.
Across Europe, spring spreads from south to north at a rate of about 150km a week starting in the south of Spain in early February and arriving in Lapland, the northernmost extremity of continental Europe, in late May.
Spring, in theory, should arrive in the southern parts of the country first and spread directly northwards, reaching Malin Head three weeks after it arrives in Mizen Head. But Ireland is an island with a significantly colder interior that takes longer to heat up. The average January temperature in the appropriately named Birr is 2 degrees colder than Valencia Island.
Finding out the answer to this question is the subject of one of the biggest scientific projects every undertaken involving the State's primary school children. They were invited to observe the flowering of the first primroses of spring, the budburst on three species of trees - the horse chestnut, hawthorn and ash - and the arrival of the first swallow.
It is part of the Greenwave project which was run on a pilot basis last year by Forfás, the national policy and advisory board for science and innovation, and expanded to all the country's primary schools this year.
The results have been posted on the project website at greenwave.ie. The first primrose sighting of the year was at Marshalstown National School near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, on February 11th and the first hawthorn budburst was revealed at Killeshin in south Laois on February 17th.
Four days later the first budding horse chestnut was spotted at St Brigid's Girl's National School in Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow.
The first swallow was reported at St Mary's Central National School in Thurles, Co Tipperary, on February 28th, a full month before they are usually expected.
Hundreds of sightings of the budburst on ash trees have been reported already, the first at Creagh National School in Co Galway on March 5th.
There have been more than 800 sightings, with more emerging every day - a process which Forfás project co-ordinator Stephanie O'Neill says this teaches children about the scientific disciplines of measuring, recording and observing while also creating a valuable database about the changing of the seasons. She hopes that the project will continue on an annual basis for the foreseeable future.
"We are getting more and more sightings every day and thousands of people have been logging on to our website on a regular basis. We would like to see more schools taking part and we would like to add more species so that schoolchildren are identifying and observing more species," she said. The data so far provides a distinctive, though not yet definitive answer, to the question as to how spring develops in Ireland.
"Spring starts on the south and east coasts and then moves in a line after that. It seems to travel in a north-westerly direction across the country. It doesn't start along the coasts and move in inland creating a doughnut effect," said Dr Éanna Ní Lamhna, the scientific adviser to the Greenwave project.
The project could have a valuable, if incidental role to what was originally intended. April was the warmest and driest across the country in living memory. Because of the extremely sunny spring, speciality flowers such as the spring gentian, bloody cranesbill, mountain avens and the first of the year's orchids - the early purple - are already in bloom in the Burren.
Met Éireann has concluded that the effects of global warming are already apparent here.
Last year, a study published in the Global Change Biology journal by scientists from 17 countries, who monitored 125,000 different reports, concluded that spring is occurring six to eight days earlier in Europe because of climate change.
Dr Ní Lamhna believes that spring arrives around five days earlier in Ireland, an event that might initially be good for farmers and gardeners, but could create serious ecological problems in the long run. "Plants are affected by temperature. It causes the sap to rise which eventually reaches the buds. Birds are not nesting earlier because they are stimulated by light and the length of daylight hasn't changed.
"You could end up with a disharmony between the birds going by the light and the plants going by the temperature," she explains.
"Evolution over millions of years would have ensured that the birds and the plants would be in harmony with each other and birds could have their babies ready to feed when the situation, as controlled by temperature, was ready, but if we have temperatures increasing and daylight staying the same, we are going to end up with a problem," she says.
Observing the effects of global warming on birds is also one of the goals of an even bigger pan-European project. Springalive is seeking to monitor the arrival of four species of migrating birds, the cuckoo, sparrow, swifts and white storks, from warmer climes to the Continent. The project is being run by Birdwatch Ireland, which is also using data from greenwave.
Already the Irish response to the project has been among the best in Europe with almost 900 people reporting sightings in just a month.
"The response in Ireland is phenomenal given the size of the country. We're now second in Europe and we have a lot more records to come," said Niall Hatch the development officer for Birdwatch Ireland.
The Greenwave project is at www.greenwave.ie
The Springalive project is at www.springalive.net