I can only give you the farmer's perspective. I'm the person who's outside every day, year after year, decade after decade really noticing what is going on in nature and with the wildlife. Most people are lucky to be exposed to nature/weather as they run from their house to their car, to their office building.
The majority of humans live the lions share of their lives indoors. They don't truly observe nature at a close level as I do.
So this past winter the trumpeter swans stayed a full month beyond their normal time. They overwinter here in my part of the Pacific Northwest. A full month. That is a truly significant amount of time. Why? Because winter was so brutal and cold.
There was no reason for them to fly off to the tundra to mate and lay eggs...it was still covered with snow!
Butterflies? They appeared six weeks later in the year than normal. Why? Because butterflies need the temperature to hit 71 (F) before they can start to fly about.
This year, where I use to live in Idaho (still have friends/fellow farmers that live there and keep me informed) are having record cold, and flooding. It's high mountain desert...cold and flooding.
I had a major loss in my garden plants, because a frost came three weeks later than the latest frost is suppose to arrive.
The frogs in our pond did begin mating in February as they always do. However for the first time, in 10 years of living at this farm, the pond froze over several times, and completely silenced the frogs, interupting their mating. Not nearly the number of eggs laid this year.
The wild cherry trees are about two weeks behind schedule this year. Normally the cherry trees are picked clean by the birds, by the 4th of July. The cherries are not ripe enough this year. I've never seen that in 37 years. Not one single time have the wild cherry trees ever been this late.
I have yet to see a single dragonfly on our farm. We have a large pond (about 1/2 an acre) and a creek, and drainage ditch (clean water) that run the entire length of our 40 acre farm, one on either side. So we have a lot of water, and a lot of dragonflies.
We don't use chemicals of any kind on our farm...nothing has changed that way.
The mosquitos are much worse than normal. The fly population is down. Flys like warm.
My livestock, sheep, goats, horses and working farm dogs, held onto their winter coats 6-7 weeks longer than normal. That's about 125 animals that did that, not just a couple.
The neighbors Jersey springer heifers did the same. He has several thousand.
All the animals got their winter coats nearly 3 weeks earlier than normal. That means they grew, and kept their winter coats an exceptionally long time.
The local coyote pack which comes and hunts on my farm in spring and late autumn has exploded to fantastically un-natural sizes. They are 30-40 coyotes strong. Night-time eye shines with high candle power flashlights tell me this is so. A coyote pack should be 2-8 strong. They had a LOT of winter killed animals to eat, since the winter was so severe. Deer didn't fair well.
A cougar has begun to make kills of sheep, and even full grown dairy cows on farms around me. Why? Deer killed off in the extremely cold/snowy winter.
We planted 11 thousand native trees on our farm four years ago, and another 1200 this past Autumn. Same types of native trees, from the same source, planted on the same farm, just four years appart. The trees planted four years ago had much faster growth. The trees planted this past Autumn have been much slower, due to all the cold.
That's over 12 thousand native trees I'm able to clearly see their growth on.
I could go on and on with personal, and acurate observations. It's quiet a bit colder this year, and apparently where I use to live (about a thousand miles from this farm, and 4700+ feet higher in elivation).
~Garnet
Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years
Actively watching nature for over 40 years