CHILDREN paddling in the sea, families sitting on the beach, couples strolling barefoot in the sand, queues at the ice cream kiosks - all part of a typical summer's day at the seaside. Except this was the end of October. Instead of the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, autumn this year has proved to be the season of shorts and T-shirts, of sunshine and sitting outside.

For seaside resorts, it has meant the astonishing sight of sun-seekers weeks after the most hardy have normally called it a day. "It has been quite exceptional. We had people sitting on the beach earlier this week, even though we haven't got the deckchairs out any more," says Kevin Barrand, resorts officer for Scarborough Borough Council.

"Weekends have been very busy, more like spring than autumn. Normally, this is a lull between the late summer season and Christmas, and the majority of our business is conferences. We've still had the conferences, but we've had a lot of holidaymakers as well."

And the heatwave has not been confined to Scarborough. Yesterday, it emerged that this October has been the warmest since records began, in 1659. That is, the warmest October for almost 450 years. And it's not just been a little bit warmer. Average temperatures of 13.5C are a full three and a half degrees warmer than the seasonal norm, and half a degree hotter than the previous record October, in 1969.

While global warming is seen as responsible for a gradual increase in temperature, this warm weather is more of a one-off, according to weather forecaster Chris Rees, of the Press Association Weather Centre. "Any impact of global warming would be of far smaller magnitude and be long-term. We're just talking one month here," he says.

"The last 15 years or so, it has maybe been half a degree warmer. This year, it is weather, it isn't climate, and you can't put it down to any one factor. And the fact that it has been concentrated at the beginning and end of the month has made it seem more unusual."

While the mild October, the result of winds coming from the south or south-west, bringing warm air from Spain and the Azores, may have been an unexpected blessing for the sun-seekers, it may not be quite such good news for some plants and animals. And, among the possible casualties is a small plant with deep blue flowers, shaped like vases and growing to just two or three inches tall, which has grown in Teesdale for the last 10,000 years.

'The Teesdale spring gentian is an alpine plant which has adapted to short, cold growing seasons," says Dr Phil Gates, lecturer in biological sciences at Durham University. "It was one of the very early colonisers after the retreat of the ice in the last Ice Age, and there is a whole group of plants in Teesdale which are similarly adapted.

'They colonised quickly because they adapted to the kind of alpine conditions you get in Teesdale, and they have hung around ever since. The flora of Teesdale is internationally famous because of the fact that it has these plants, but if the climate gets milder, then other species will move in and push them out."

Milder winters will also disrupt the growing patterns of other plants, used to having to survive a long, cold season. "Plants that shed their leaves in the autumn produce an over-wintering bud, which is designed to protect the growing point until the conditions are right to grow again," Dr Gates says.

"Natural chemicals keep them dormant, and these are broken down in the spring, but if you don't get cold enough temperatures in the autumn, it can delay bud burst and flowering in some species. And if it delays early growth, it can shorten the growing season. It is not automatic that a longer mild year would produce a longer growing season."

Plants and trees which are sensitive to frost could also suffer, according to Dr Jeremy Barnes, a reader in plant sciences at Newcastle University. "It is becoming a distinctly measurable effect that you do have warming," he says. "But, in the North-East, the latest predictions are that we will get warm summers, with increased drought, but during the winter it will get colder and considerably wetter.

"One thing that is for sure is that plants that are sensitive to frost, such as ornamental shrubs, imported trees and fragile plants will suffer quite severely." And the net result of climate change is likely to see a very different kind of wildlife in the North-East.

"The distribution of small animals and birds is quite likely to change, and there will be substantial shifts in vegetation over the next century," he says. "How that will happen is very difficult to predict, but some people say we will become much more like parts of Scandinavia, while others say we will become much more like south-west England."

But while some species will go, others will arrive, with more mobile species the ones most likely to benefit, according to Terry Coult, conservation manager for Durham Wildlife Trust. "We're beginning to get a number of moth species, which are colonising County Durham, and butterfly species, such as gatekeeper, comma and speckled wood," he says.

"They used to occur in County Durham in the 19th Century, then they moved much further south and now they are coming back, and we're also getting a number of dragonfly species. The species which can move tend to be the common ones, because they have the ability to colonise. The specialist ones, linked to a particular habitat, are usually not very good colonisers, so they aren't able to take advantage of global warming."

Birds which normally migrate over the winter, such as black caps and chiffchaffs, are now more likely to stay, says Michael Krause, of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, but this could pose a problem for non-migratory birds, such as robins.

"If the winter is warm enough so they don't migrate, they are going to be competing for food with resident species. If it stays mild, there could be more insects to eat, but if it turns cold and the insects are all killed off, then the birds will find themselves with not enough to eat."

Some resident birds, such as blue tits and longtail tits, might also delay flocking together, triggered by the onset of winter, and thus make themselves more vulnerable to predators, he says. But while climate change may give the North-East a different kind of wildlife, this may be just another natural evolution, says Dr Gates. "The environment has been changing over millions of years," he says. "We like to preserve things as they are and, in the best possible world, organisms evolve over time.

"The North-East may look completely different in 100 years. There are two things that species can do in the face of climate change: they can move, and there isn't much scope for that around here, or they can evolve, and it takes a long time for a slowly-reproducing organism to evolve. How much human interference can do is another question, and it is probably as much as we can do to let things take their course.

"We can try and tinker with things, and preserve things, but when you have got global forces happening, we may just have to accept these changes."