Increased warmth has also affected living things. Plants and animals are experiencing longer growing seasons across the Northern Hemisphere. For example, the Japanese keep very detailed records on the blossoming of their Tokyo cherry trees, so they know they are blooming 5 days earlier on average than they were 50 years ago. 

Mosquitoes, birds, and insects are also moving north in the Northern Hemisphere. The pine beetle, a native pest of lodge pole and jack-pine trees, has chewed up tens of thousands of square miles of forest across North America, staining the green forest with the rust of dead needles. A 2008 Nature article attributed their move northward and to higher elevation forests to warmer winters, hotter summers, and less rain. To make matters worse, the scientists projected that the beetles themselves could become a force for climate change. For example, the carbon released by the decay of the trees they have killed in British Columbia may cause the forest to emit more carbon than it absorbs.