The 5 senses of spring: How climate change is shaping our seasonal experience [Video]

Singing frogs are looking for love. Sweet sap is flowing from the maple trees. Striking migratory birds are returning to their northerly nests.

Spring is about transformation, a season often marked by its dynamic sights, smells, sounds and tastes. As humans change the climate, our experience of the season is changing, too.

Here are just a few of the ways that climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is transforming our spring senses.

HEARING: A quieter chorus

It sounds a bit like a finger running over a fine-tooth comb, but it’s about as loud as a lawn mower.

It’s hard to spot — at only 2.5 centimetres long — but when the chorus frog emerges in early spring its mating call can be heard from a kilometre away.

To Jeffrey Ethier, it’s the most iconic sound of spring’s arrival.

“You can kind of feel your eardrums vibrating,” said Ethier, a PhD candidate at the University …