Climate change is bringing earlier, dangerous ‘false springs’, longer summers and shorter winters as the world warms In the UK, it’s often difficult to feel too worried about a longer summer. Although recently, perhaps, they’ve come with a disquieting feeling – a sense that something is amiss. Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Chinese Academy Sciences in Beijing has confirmed it. As the world has warmed, the seasons have shifted, bringing longer, hotter summers, shorter winters and more frequent and damaging ‘false springs’. The researchers utilised historical daily climate data from 1952 to 2011 to produce the study, which has been published in Geophysical Research Letters. They found that, on average, global summers have elongated from 78 days in 1952 to 95 days in 2011. At the same time, on average, spring has contracted from 124 to 115 days; autumn from 87 to 76 days; and winter from … Continue reading As the world warms, the seasons are shifting