Climate change to impact current and future fall colors in Cincinnati

The increase of extreme weather events due to climate change already could be having an impact on the timing and vibrancy of fall color. We learned that heat and drought are big players in having an impact on the vibrancy and advanced timing of fall color. Experts at Northern Kentucky University tell us more about the science behind the study. Yingying Xie, Assistant Professor at NKU said, "So based on studies we notice that too much heat in summer and drought events in the early summer and early fall, they can stress trees. And when trees are stressed, they can not do too much work to continue their growing season. So they have to wrap up the spring season quickly and they say, 'ok, that's enough' and they have to wrap up. And also they don't have a lot of time to produce the color pigments in their leaves so that can reduce color vibrancy." We've even seen impacts from climate in just the last year. When compared to our previous fall, the timing of this year's 2023 color change was delayed. Color vibrancy could also be less in some areas. This was due to the hot and dry weather this summer. If events like this continue, fall foliage could look very different in the next 5 to 10 years. Xie said, "So if we continue having the extreme weather events like the heat events, the drought events, we would expect to see more brown color and not as much as the yellow and red color because the leaves just quickly dry out and don't produce color pigments."This could have a serious impact on the economy too. Harder to predict peak color or less vibrant color may mean less tourism in popular leaf peeping cities. Fall color will be at its peak here in Cincinnati for another week or two before the leaves fall off the trees for the season.