On the trace of climate change is a story about efforts made to detect and understand how climate change is affecting the different fields of our life. In general, there are two main issues, global warming and loss of rainfall. In Hungary temperature rising is causing mild winters with the disappearing of snowfall and frosty days. This is changing species of our environment. So does the loss of rainfall which comes with an uneven distribution, resulting a two-month long drought period last summer.

The story started as a documentation of the Hungarian meteorological services. It has quite a long history and regular data collection starting from 1870. However, to see the trends behind the numbers and data I had to look further. I started to follow the work of environmental researchers, ecologists, dendrologist and biologists, who’s research or experiment is strongly connected to climate change. Our warming environment seems to change much faster than we would normally think. Migrating birds are bringing in foreign seeds that could not survive before, but under this condition can take the place of indigenous plant species. Warming lakes are home to invasive fish species that change the long existing ecosystem. Changes in rainfall also change plants, the typical Hungarian grassland can lose the indigenous grass species due to drought, they tend to be replaced my invasive ones, more adaptable to future conditions. During the story I followed the scientists meanwhile their actual research, creating a documentary essay about them at work.

All the situations are real and all the action that can be seen was part of a measurement, research or experiment.