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Scientists see a fingerprint of climate change in the denuded branches, and a pattern of things to come. The effects of climate change, they say, are unlikely to be gradual or predictable. Warming winters will throw into confusion old orders of species, nurturing unexpected predators and weakening age-old relationships that helped form forests.

"They were gross," recalled Barbara Hoffman, 53, with a visible shudder. "You could hear them munching. I said spray 'em." Most trees recovered in the first year; fewer survived the second. But as the bugs struck again in late 2007, an accomplice drought hit the weakened trees, leaving the island now with swaths of stark, barren and lifeless branches.

The islanders fought through clouds of drifting filaments with brooms, brushed off the showers of excrement after they walked under trees, and tiptoed through a maze of half-inch worms on the sidewalks. The local newspapers ran pictures of building sides covered with caterpillars, looking like horror-movie outtakes.

"You can get unexpected dynamics in nature as we generate new combinations with climate change," said David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest, who heads a research group financed by the National Science Foundation to study the Martha's Vineyard die-off

In New England, the majestic hemlocks that were grist for Longfellow and Frost are doomed by the steady advance of a pest in warmer winters. "To see hundreds of acres of dead forest like this in New England is remarkable," said Foster.

Farther north and west in Massachusetts, Foster and others are studying the devastation of the stately hemlocks.  An insect brought from Japan, called the hemlock woolly adelgid, is moving steadily northward into New England. It already has infested much of the US South, bringing what forestry officials call "an ecological disaster" to the iconic Great Smokey Mountains and Blue Ridge Parkway. With warmer temperatures in New England-some studies put the average winter increase at 4 degrees in 40 years-the pest is advancing. "The northward spread is being kept in check by cold winters. As winters warm, which is what is projected, that all falls apart," said Wyatt Oswald, an assistant professor of science at Emerson college who is studying the hemlocks. "At some point, climate change will allow all these hemlock to be wiped out."

Certainly the residents here were perplexed at the caterpillar outbreaks from 2004 to 2007. Although several insects were at work, the prime culprit was eventually identified as a fall cankerworm, a long-time resident of the island that no one recalled having done more than minimal damage. This outbreak was a full-fledged invasion.

"It was disgusting," said Jason Gale, 39. He recalls glancing back at the island from his lobster boat, and being shocked by the stretches of dead trees.

Many fishermen switched to lobster as winter flounder, a cold-water fish once abundant in fishing boat holds, declined. But lobster stocks are stressed in some areas now. Biologists on a multi-state Fisheries Commission committee have found that warmer waters, disease and fishing have depleted lobster stocks, and they recently recommended a five-year ban on lobstering from Cape Cod to Virginia.

"One of the grim realities of global warming is that it is bringing change to fisheries. There are going to be regime changes in the oceans and management is going to have to adapt to that,"

Greg Walinski believes he has seen first-hand the workings of warmer waters on fish stock. The 53-year-old Cape Cod fisherman used to hunt for large bluefin tuna. "In the '80s and '90s we would get 60 to 80 giant bluefin in a season," he said. "But we started to see less and less. It got to a point where it wasn't even worth going out. Most of the big fish are up in Canada," he said. "We get the little bluefin that used to be further south."

He switched to cod, but in what seems to be a repeat of the pattern, Walinski said he finds himself chasing the fish further and further out. He now travels 120 miles in a 35-foot boat - an arduous and somewhat dangerous commute - to reach Georges Bank for codfish.

regulators say they have seen little evidence of a similar rebound in cod on the George's Bank, and some other cold-water species, like winter flounder and pollock, remain low.

The vineyard also escaped the effects of the long, cold winter, he said: “We’ve been very lucky in this corner of the country. With the frosts in April and early May we got down to minus two very close to the buds being frosted off the vines. But not quite.” Now, Mr Barnes said he was hoping the weather stayed dry for the harvest at the end of September. Apples growers have also enjoyed the hot, sunny weather, but said the recent downpours were welcome. Sarah Calcutt, business development manager at Norman Collett, which markets English fruit from its base in Paddock Wood, said the extra light and warmth had been great for Rubens, a new variety of apples. “I’ve been out looking at orchards today with the National Fruit Show president and we’ve been particularly looking at Rubens. “We do not know if it will be a bumper crop yet because they won’t be picked until to September, but from an apple’s perspective the heat and sunshine in particular are great. “Photosynthesis is better with good light because it seeds the tree really well and gives it good energy for feeding themselves next year. A lot of day light hours are wonderful. “We’ve just had rain in time. One of the farmers who has no irrigation system said this bit we’ve just had came just in time for his young trees, which were starting to look a bit stressed. So the recent downpours have been fantastic.” However, organic fruit farmer Mrs Martin said that it had been a bad year for some fruits. “Raspberries are not looking very good this year. It was too hot for them and they were cooking on the plants,” she said. “But a little rain does everything good.” Dr Chris Atkinson, head of science at East Malling Research Centre, which has been collecting climate data since 1913, said the climate was a big determinate when growing fruit because temperature and rainfall had a big impact on crops. The climate data shows that the seasons have been getting longer and the winters are getting milder. “We can even answer sceptics about climate change – no one can argue that climatic data shows it is changing,” he said.

The centre has recorded increasingly milder winters and longer seasons. Dr Atkinson said the changing temperature should be used as an opportunity to explore new crops and spoke about someone who had successfully grown a banana outside in Cornwall.

“Apricots and nectarines on a commercial scale we believe will achieve economic gain in the UK rather than just surviving.” The centre is currently trialling hardy kiwis to see whether they can be grown as a crop.

Speaking about his own cherry trees in his garden, he said that this year they had produced more fruit than over the last 15.

But as museum budgets shrink, energy costs spiral, and gradual climate changes make the traditional HVAC system more costly to maintain, conservators and other museum experts are rethinking this model. Should museums add to global warming by continuing to rely so heavily on such systems in the first place? And what happens if unforeseen events put them and other protective measures out of commission? As a first step some are pushing for new scientific research while considering updated versions of old solutions.

In all, 11 species were followed from as far back as the 1980s through 2005. In the late 1990s, certain species started vanishing. In particular, the “fairly sedentary” snakes that use an “ambush foraging technique” disappeared in greater numbers compared with the “wide-ranging, active foragers,” said Reading. And those most sedentary snakes tended to be the venomous ones. “The scale and precision of this study” impressed Head. And while researchers were careful not to pin the mysterious decline on any one cause, the vastly different geologies of the regions, from tropical to temperate, suggested “one ultimate driving mechanism,” with climate change the clearest culprit, he said. “It’s alarming, to be honest,” Head said. “This is a compelling analysis that is certainly going to get a lot of people looking at the diversity of the species.”

“It’s possible what we have found is an aberration. But I suspect it is much more widespread.” Reading makes it clear the discovery is only the first stage. “The whole reason for this paper was to say, ‘Look, this is what we’ve found. We are quite alarmed by it. We don’t know what the causes are, but we are flagging it so that herpetologists around the world will look at it.”

SOME DECLINING SNAKE POPULATIONS Smooth snake (Coronella austriaca) in the U.K. Asp viper (Vipera aspis) in France and Italy Orsini's viper (Vipera ursinii) in Italy Gaboon viper (Bitis gabonica) in Nigeria Rhinoceros viper (Bitis nasicornis) in Nigeria Royal or ball python (Python regius) in Nigeria Western whip snake (Hierophis viridiflavus) in France Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissimus) in France

The Southeast, South and Central regions experienced their second, fifth and seventh warmest June on record, respectively.

Record-warm June temperatures were observed in Delaware, New Jersey and North Carolina (tied), where each had average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees F above the long-term mean. Many other states ranked in their top ten based on 116 years of data.

Midway through 2010, four New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island) have experienced their warmest January-June period on record. Eight other states in the Northeast and Great Lakes areas had a top-ten warm such period.

Persistent warmth made the year's second quarter (April-June) much warmer than normal for every state east of the Mississippi River, and several to its west. Louisiana and ten Atlantic Seaboard states (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut [tied], New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina) had a record-warm second quarter. In all, twenty states had their warmest or second-warmest such period on record. The warmth in these areas contributed to both the Northeast and Southeast climate regions' warmest April-June period.