(Newser)
– A new study finds that summers have become longer and warmer over the years, but it also suggests that we haven’t seen anything yet. Research in Geophysical research letters suggests that summer in the northern hemisphere will last six months until the end of the century, if climate change continues on its current path, Science Times reports. Scientists analyzed data from 1952 to 2011 and calculated that summer increased from 78 to 95 days during this period, according to NBC News. At the same time, the winter decreased from 76 to 73 days, the spring from 124 to 115 days, and the autumn from 87 to 82 days. On this trajectory, the summers would last about six months until 2100, and the winters would have at least two months. For the study, researchers defined early summer as the onset of the hottest 25% of temperatures, and winter as the onset of the coldest 25%.
“This is the biological clock for every living thing,” says lead author Yuping Guan of the State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “People argue about raising the temperature by 2 degrees or 3 degrees, but the global warming that changes the seasons is something that everyone can understand.” In a press release, the researchers say that such prolonged warm temperatures would have long-term effects on almost all aspects of life, in the form of high heat waves, wildfires, wilted crops, etc. A Kent scientist who is not involved in the study tells NBC about another possible side effect: “You could get to a point where insects, such as malaria mosquitoes, that are normally kept outside high areas large, because they cannot survive overnight, they could survive longer and at higher altitudes ”. (Read more about climate change.)