Summers are already getting longer and warmer while winters are shorter and warmer due to global warming.
(photo: Flickr)
Some people like long summers, others not so much. By the year 2100, people living in the Northern Hemisphere will have no choice but to get used to hot summers lasting half a year.
The four traditional seasons will be long gone as climate change is expected to warm temperatures to summer heat levels much of the year, scientists say.
The move is already underway.
“Summers are getting longer and warmer while winters are shorter and warmer as a result of global warming,” explained Yuping Guan, a physicist at the State Tropical Marine Science Laboratory who lead author of a new study.
The researchers looked at daily climate data from 1952 to 2011 to measure changes in the length of the four seasons and their locations in the Northern Hemisphere. They described the beginning of summer as the beginning of temperatures in the hottest quarter of a year and winter as the beginning of the coldest 25%.
They found that summer from 1952 to 2011 averaged from 78 days to 95 days, while winter shifted from 76 days to 73 days. Last spring was shortened from 124 days to 115 days, and that winter ranged from 87 days to 82 days.
“Accordingly, spring and summer began earlier, and autumn and winter began later. The Mediterranean and Tibetan Plateau region have seen the biggest changes to their seasonal cycles, ”they note.
If these trends continue and we are not successful in mitigating the worst effects of climate change in the coming decades, the winter will last less than two months before the start of next month. century and spring and autumn will decrease further. At the same time, summer will continue to expand with extra heat.
In fact an average annual temperature could be anywhere between 2 degrees or 5 degrees higher within less than a hundred years. “Warmer and longer summers experience more frequent and intense high-temperature events – heat waves and wildfires,” says Congwen Zhu, a monsoon researcher at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences in Beijing.
Needless to say, major seasonal changes will have a major impact on wildlife and human communities around the world. Prolonged drought results in normal crop failure, e.g. At the same time, entire ecosystems like the ones in the Amazon could collapse while dense rainforests give way to deciduous savanna.