(Newer)
– A new study finds that summers have gotten longer and hotter over the years, but it also suggests we haven’t seen anything yet. Into the investigation Geophysical Research Letters suggests that summer in the Northern Hemisphere will last six months by the end of the century if climate change continues on its current path, the Science Times reports. Scientists looked at data from 1952 to 2011 and calculated that the summer grew from 78 to 95 days during that period, according to NBC News. At the same time, winter shrank from 76 to 73 days, spring from 124 to 115 days and autumn from 87 to 82 days. On this stretch, summers would last about six months by 2100 and winters would last in less than two months. For the study, the researchers defined the beginning of summer as the start of the hottest 25% of temperatures and winter as the start of the coldest 25%.
“This is the biological clock for every living thing,” said lead author Yuping Guan of the State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “People argue about a 2- or 3-degree rise in temperature, but global warming changing the seasons is something everyone can understand.” In a press release, the researchers say such prolonged hot temperatures would have far-reaching effects on almost every aspect of life, in the form of increased heat waves, wildfires, withered crops, etc. A Kent State scientist who was not involved in the study says NBC on another possible side effect: “You could get to a point where insects such as malaria mosquitoes that are normally kept from high elevations because they cannot survive overnight may survive longer and at higher altitudes.” (Read more stories about climate change.)