Climate Change And Global Warming - My Personal Observation And What To Expect In The Future

I think it is important to talk about why we experience drastic changes in the seasons in relation to the weather.

In my experience over the past few years, I can say with certainty, that the four seasons are starting to lose their beauty. I don't really feel the transition from winter to spring and from summer to autumn. I don't know about you, but it seems to me like winter is longer in terms of cold and hot summer is long gone.

There is a long-standing debate on the internet, in various forums and social media platforms, that the highly visible climate change is the cause of the global warming and that the causes often lead to different opinions.

While the mainstream media is telling us, that climate change is the cause of global warming, the alternative media channels are telling us, that this whole thing is a hoax and of course there are endless conspiracy theories too.

What prompted me to write this article is that in April, I still have to put my winter coat on, when I feel like going for a walk. When I heard a week ago, that it was going to snow at Easter, I painted a big smile on my face and thought, that this statement would make an April Fool's joke.

Of course, this was no joke. The weather forecast was right. On Easter Monday, I looked out of my window in absolute shock, as if I had never seen snow before. Clutching my head in surprise, I wondered how long this winter would drag on. Of course, the amount of the white wonder wasn't enough to snowball and build a snowman, but the fact that it's snowing is quite thought provoking.

If the daffodils, the dandelions and the buttercup flowers in our gardens could talk, the whole neighborhood would be clamoring, that we had never seen anything like it. What the heck is falling on us.

My friends and I were talking about how the summer here in England is just as hot as it was ten years ago in Hungary. It should be noted, however, that in recent years the United Kingdom has had mild winters and cool summers compared to other European countries. In winter, the temperature rarely fell below 3 degrees Celsius and in summer the mercury on the thermometer rarely exceeded 25 degrees Celsius.

Nowadays, this is no longer the case, as winters here have become cold and summers are sometimes suitable for swimming. Increasingly, we notice how cold it is, how cold we are or how hot it is and how nice it would be to take a dip in the sea to cool off.

Climate Change Is Humanity's Biggest Problem

Let's look at the impacts of climate change. How they affect nature and wildlife.

By now, everyone knows, that icebergs are melting, forest fires ravage, desertification leading to migration, some cities in America are sometimes flooded by seawater, some animals are losing their habitats and certain species are dying out at a rapid rate. In addition, there are more storms and hurricanes, which cause the pollen to fall off the flowers and lead to the death of the bees. I could go on and on...

Why We Did Not Address Global Warming In 2020?

This problem seems to have suddenly disappeared with the spread of Covid-19. Nobody talked about it, but it was there. Yet the pandemic contributed greatly to cleaning up the air, with flights cancelled, factories closed and fewer cars on the roads due to the lockdown.

The reason we should not be so happy about this is that it was not the result of green measures, not the result of green reforms by big companies, but of necessity, which has led to heavy economic and human sacrifices.

The World Meteorological Organization reports, that this decade has become the hottest decade on the planet since records began.

While in 2019 there were huge forest fires in Australia and the whole world was busy watching them and the protests were all over the news, in 2020 there were even bigger disasters in terms of forest fires.

We didn't hear so much about these natural disasters, because the Covid-19 pandemic dominated and everyone was focused on not catching the disease, adhering to the measures put in place by the government.

I would add, however, that the sense of immediate danger does not last long for people. More than a year after the outbreak of the virus, people did not perceive the whole pandemic as so dangerous. That is my own personal observation.

Six Months Of Summer By 2100

Although I mentioned at the beginning of my article, that I personally think winter is longer, than summer at the moment, the results of my research suggests otherwise.

Global warming is changing the length of the seasons, a new study has found. The authors of the study, published on 19 February in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, predict that by 2100, semi-annual summers could become regular in the Northern Hemisphere. At the same time, winters will be shorter than two months, and spring and autumn will decrease by a similar amount.

The changes will have far-reaching and profound consequences worldwide. The disruption of the currently known balance of seasons will upset agricultural patterns and animal behavior, increase the frequency of heat waves and droughts, cause forest fires and overall increase the risk to humanity, the study authors wrote.

"The viruses carried by tropical mosquitoes are likely to spread northwards, which could lead to outbreaks during the longer and hotter summers."

- the LiveScience news portal quoted the authors of the study as saying. The combination of these effects and other risk factors makes it crucial to understand how seasonal changes will affect climate change.

To test this hypothesis, the authors of the study examined average temperature data for the Northern Hemisphere between 1952 and 2011. They wanted to find out how the start of the new seasons changes from year to year. The researchers defined the start of summer by the time when temperatures reached 25 percent of the highest average temperature in the years they studied. They used a similar method to define winter, only they used 25 per cent of the average temperature of the coldest days. Spring and autumn were made up of days that could not be classified in any of the above sets.

The researchers found that between 1952 and 2011, the length of summer increased from 78 to 95 days, while winter shortened from 76 to 73 days. The length of the transition seasons also decreased, from 124 to 115 days in spring and from 87 to 82 days in autumn. Average temperatures have changed accordingly over the period, with both summers and winters becoming warmer.

Researchers have also built several climate models to predict the extent to which seasons might change in the future. If business as usual continues - i.e. if no efforts are made to mitigate global warming - by 2100, spring and summer could start a month earlier, than in 2011 and autumn and winter could be at least half a month later. As the northern hemisphere will have summer for most of the year, it is likely that not only the length of summers but also their average temperature will shorten.

Today, the impact of the changing seasons can be immeasurable. The transformation affects everything from bird migration to cereal production in the Earth's biosphere. The authors of the study say the surest way to mitigate the most severe impacts is to start reducing our carbon emissions now.

Lead image source: https://www.fairobserver.com/more/environment/climate-change-environmental-news-global-warming-latest-world-news-47902/