Global warming looms large in headlines that promise cataclysm: islands vanishing, tornados tearing out Texas, massive starvation. Cause and effect lurk out of reach in distant glaciers, in sweeping ocean currents, and in the ozone, beyond our breathable air.

The individual feels powerless to help. Searching for evidence of global climate change seems to require scientists using technological marvels to probe ancient ice and rock, to photograph earth from distant satellites or to measure temperatures on the bottom of the ocean. What can we - the non-scientists - do to help?

One answer involves personal observation from your own backyard. You, the individual, can play an important role by adding your observations to scientific knowledge of our Earth by being a phenologist.

Phenology involves observing annual plant and animal phenomenon in relation to climate, seasonal, or other environmental changes, and can take place right in our own communities. Like animals that respond quickly to subtle climate changes, we are natural observers of change in the world around us.

For instance, ice skaters notice that skating is no longer a Thanksgiving possibility. Skiers claim the snows come later, if at all. A farmer wonders why tomato skins are thicker. A child wonders why the frogs have stopped singing. A Grandmother remembers that the lilacs always bloomed for her March birthday. Many such records of observation exist - not from labs or lengthy scientific expeditions - but from people's everyday observations, from their recollections over time, or from family or farming records.

These are valid observations, and reports ranging from local migratory bird activity and seasonal planting events to insect hatches all become pieces of a larger puzzle that scientists are putting together. Without all these pieces, the picture is incomplete.

In our Power of Observation stories, you'll learn how you can be involved from people who are observing, from people who are noticing, and from people who are talking about the changes they see around them.









THAW WAGERING
The Alaskan Nenana Ice Classic started in 1917 when bridge building over the Tanana River was underway, and the spring break up of ice was crucial to construction. Each March since, people have raised a tripod set into holes carved out of the ice with chain saws then filled with water to freeze the apparatus in place. A wire connects the tripod to a clock; when the ice moves 100 feet, alarms go off, the clock stops, and winter is officially over.

As participants anticipate winning the more than $300,000 pot, scientists celebrate a different sort of win. "What began as a wintertime diversion for railroad engineers has given us an unusual 84-year data set on the timing of river ice breakup," says Sagarin, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California (see full article at Stanford University's website).

"Because scientists weren't thinking about climate change 80 or 90 years ago, it's really important that people kept these data," notes Sagarin, who has a keen interest in phenology -- a branch of science that looks at the annual timing of natural events, such as bird migrations. Phenology used to be dismissed as a hobby of eccentric British naturalists, but today scientists mine the data for clues about climate change.

Analysis of the Tanana River breakup indicates that, on average, the event occurs 5.5 days sooner than it did in 1917.

ALTERING THE RHYTHMS OF THE WILD
Each year for 31 years, biologist Jerram Brown has trekked into the Chiricahua Mountains of southern Arizona to record spring behavior of Mexican jays. Brown records the dates females lay their first clutch, then several weeks later he shinnies up 15-meter-tall Chihuahua pines to band each and every chick. His records indicate that the jays are laying their eggs earlier each season. By 1998, the first eggs of the season arrived 10 days earlier than in 1971.

Brown connects global warming with the earlier reproduction. Pre-breeding season average daily minimum temperatures h

BAFFLED IN BUFFALO
For the first time since 1884, Buffalo, NY had a snowless November in 2001. The month's average snowfall is ten inches. This November, Annemarie Orlando of Tonawanda reported that the cherry trees were blooming; meanwhile meteorologist Steve McLaughlin of the National Weather Service said the month ended with temperatures above 60 degrees. This extreme comes after last year's extreme: A record-breaking 45.6 inches of November snow.
SANDSTORMS AND SHIFTING DUNES IN CHINA
ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, June 14, (C) 2001 Associated Press

When Du Hanchun was growing up in the 1930s, Langtougou villagers had to cross a tangle of reeds and willows to get to the broad banks of the sparkling Chaobai River.

Today the encroaching desert has almost buried Langtougou. "There's not much to do these days. The corn fields are all gone,'' says Du, a thin man with a steady gaze who in his 75 years has seen the valley about 100 miles north of Beijing turn bare.

Su Rongxi stands with one foot firmly on his tiled roof. The other foot sinks ankle-deep into the sand dune threatening to engulf his house and Langtougou village, where his ancestors have lived for generations.

"We have no money to move and, besides, who would have us?" Su told the writer for Asia Week. "There's nothing to do but dig away the sand and wait to see what happens. Sometimes I dream of the sand falling around me faster than I can dig away. The sand chokes me. I worry that in real life, the sand will win."

(C) Photo by Ricky Wong

LEMON CROPS
On the small Greek island of Aegina, in the spring of 1995, a waiter named Stathis told Edward Tick that he had been a citrus farmer on Crete. However, for several years in a row his entire lemon crop had been destroyed by rain. Starting in the early 1990s, unusually long, heavy, and late rains had pummeled his orchards every spring. Instead of ripening in the sun, the swelling fruits were knocked off the trees by ill-timed downpours and lay rotting in puddles by the thousands. A few years of this had made him desperate; Stathis eventually migrated north to look for work so he could support his family. His wife and children were still on Crete, trying to grow the lemons that his ancestors had cultivated for generations but that had become, mysteriously, harder and harder to produce.
INUIT COMMUNITY
"We can't read the weather like we used to," says Rosemarie Kuptana, an activist among 130 Inuit people in Sachs Harbor, the only community on an island that covers 28,000 square miles in northwestern Canada. Water is slower to freeze and permafrost is thawing, which means fewer polar bears and seals to hunt. Kuptana says, "We don't know when to travel on the ice and our food sources are getting farther and farther away."

The list of other changes is long. Autumn freezes come later and spring thaws earlier. Mosquitoes stay longer. Winters don't as often reach the normal lows of 40 degrees below zero. New species of birds - such as barn swallows and robins - and animals are appearing. "For the first time in Inuit memory, grizzly bears have been sighted near my home community," says Kuptana. Other changes include discolorations and thinning of sea ice.

Mud that used to stay frozen is now moving. That's causing houses to crack and shift. "When I was a child, I never heard thunder or saw lightning, but in the last few years we've had thunder and lightning," she added. "The animals really don't know what to do because they've never experienced this kind of phenomenon."

BITTER HARVEST
Forrest Bartlett can vividly recall the days when he gathered sap in buckets and transported maple syrup by horse-drawn wagon. His family has been sugaring on his South Pomfret, VT, farm for three generations but "the sap doesn't run like it used to," says the 63-year old Bartlett. "If warming trends continue, Vermont's sugaring industry will dry up."

Bartlett's recollections of colder winters past are borne out in a recent regional study on global warming. Published as part of a national climate assessment, Preparing for a Changing Climate concludes that New England temperatures could rise six to 10 degrees on average by the end of this century, profoundly changing the region's way of life. Warming of this magnitude would harm New England's ski industry, cause coastal flooding and transform Boston's climate to that of a Southern city like Richmond or Atlanta.

Reprinted with permission from Environmental Defense 257 Park Ave. South NY, NY 10010