The high temperatures that are being recorded in the Valencian Community are giving rise to unusual images. The Valencian Association of Meteorology (Avamet) has released a photograph of an unexpected fruit of this warming, that of a cherry collected in the middle of January in Benissili, in the Val de Gallineta (Alicante). The photo was delivered by José Andrés Rodrigo, a member of this association, and was taken by his farmer's father.
The image of this cherry was spread on social networks on Tuesday and shows once again that the cherry trees have borne flower and fruit in the winter months, as Avamet has been confirming in recent times. “The farmers of the Vall de Gallinera had never seen anything like this,” says the comment from Valencian meteorology fans on the X network (formerly Twitter).
“It may be an isolated event, but it is relevant and symptomatic of the destabilization of the stable pattern of the seasons,” says Juan Bordera, popularizer, author of several on the climate emergency and co-author of the essay “The End of Seasons.”
“This image of Benissili is not strange at all. "I myself have picked a green cherry in my cherry fields, as big as a chickpea, in November," explains to this newspaper Enric Simó, one of the leaders of the Unió Llauradora i Ramadera union in Castellón, who has confirmed this on his farm in La Jana (Maestrazgo) the anomalous behaviors of this fruit.
Cherries (like other fruits) need an annual rest period to remain cold (between 400 and 500 hours) and to be able to sprout strongly at the beginning of spring. However, the high temperatures of the last 4 or 5 years have led to the appearance of early blooms and fruits. “The weather tricks the trees and makes them believe that it is already spring. The weather has gone crazy,” this farmer tells us.
In its natural cycle, the cherry blossom appears in the months of March and April; In May there are already cherries; The fruit is collected in late spring and can be harvested until summer. Then in September and October the leaves fall, and until December they continue to lose them.
However, it has been seen that winter heat accelerates the life cycle process on dates when there is still a long journey in winter (in which the fruit is exposed to frost), all of which can result in low productivity. . “All this is a consequence of climate change,” says Simó.
“This type of phenomenon is in line with the sustained warming that we are having, especially the last two years, which have been extraordinary in terms of average temperature. It is nature's response to this situation of such anti-cyclonic winters,” says Marc Prohom, head of the Climatology area of the Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya (SMC). This phenomenon is not seen, for example, in Lleida or in hollow areas because there is a fog that cools the environment. But “in coastal areas or high places they have many hours of sun and everything matures; The flower comes out earlier and everything matures more quickly.”
All this coincides with maximum temperatures that were again unusually high yesterday for these dates in the Valencian Community. They have reached 29.4ºC in Chelva (Valencia) and 29ºC in Bicorp (Valencia), more than three degrees above their highest record for the month of January. On the day they once again broke temperature records in the towns of Castellón and Valencia.
The early presence of flowers and fruits has also been detected in other years by the Fenocat network of the Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya, which has been able to see an advance of one week in the flowering of some fruit trees, while at the same time it can be seen that the leaf falls later. “The entire vegetative period of the plant is widening,” adds Prohom. All of this has effects on the water needs of the plant which, “since it is active for many more weeks, it needs more water to continue functioning. “It's a vicious circle,” adds the climatologist.
The amateur meteorologist Jose Borrell Bargaló in the Serra d'Almos (Tivissa, Ribera d'Ebre) has carried out a meticulous inventory with notes that complete a record of the weather and its effects over 50 years. His work indicates that the ripening of the apple tree has come 22 days earlier, the flowering of the olive tree has come 16 days earlier and the ripening of the cherry tree comes 8 days earlier than 45 years ago. For its part, the plum tree blooms 7 days earlier.
