Researchers discovered that plant, insect and bird life native to the High Arctic had made dramatic seasonal cycle adjustments to the region's earlier snow melt in the space of just 10 years.

On average, the insects, plants and birds such as the Sanderling and the Ruddy Turnstone had moved their springtime rituals -- budding, emerging from the ground, hatching times -- forward two weeks in the period between 1996 and 2005.

In some cases, flowers were emerging from buds and chicks were hatching a full 30 days sooner in 2005 than they would have in 1996 in response to sharply increased temperatures that burned off the winter's snow layer.

"Our study confirms what many people already think, that the seasons are changing and it is not just one or two warm years but a strong trend seen over a decade," said Toke Hoye, a researcher with the National Environmental Research Institute at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

The trend can be traced to the region's earlier spring snow melt, which occurs about a fortnight earlier than it did a decade ago.

This should serve as an early warning system to the rest of the planet of the scale and pace of climate-related change, the researchers said.

While not unexpected, the rate of change is surprising, even though Arctic temperatures are increasing at twice the global average.

Similar studies have noted much more modest changes with respect to plants in Europe (an advancement of 2.5 days per decade) and globally (5.1 days per decade).

"We were particularly surprised to see that the trends were so strong when considering that the entire summer is very short in the High Arctic -- with just three to four months from snowmelt to freeze up at our Zackenberg study site in northeast Greenland," said Hoye, a co-author of the study.