Wednesday 30 July 2014

Changing Seasons

After yet another stifling hot day, i was very glad to hear the weatherman declare that the jet stream is due to go on on of its famous meanderings and slam down the length of country this weekend bringing some relief after what seems an eternity of hot days.
With the climate changing the heat is only going to get worse as we go forward which means that i will be complaining even more from May to September as i get older but maybe not because science has found that the seasons are changing dates.
By studying temperatures over the past 150 years, a new study from the University of California and University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit has found that the Earth's seasons have shifted back in the calendar year, with the hottest and coldest days of the years now occurring earlier.
They found that the hottest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere landing around July 21. But from the mid-1950s onward the hottest day came 2 days earlier.
With this shift of peak warming comes a corresponding shift in the onset of the seasons.
"Once we have accounted for the fact that the temperature averaged over any given year is increasing, we find that some months have been warming more than other months," said Alexander Stine, a graduate student at UC Berkeley. "We were surprised to find that over land, most of the difference in the warming of one month relative to another is simply the result of this shift in the timing of the seasons, and a decrease in the difference between summer and winter temperatures."
The timing of the shift along with the rise in global temperatures leads them to think that human-caused climate change is the ultimate cause behind the shift so it if it continues accelerating it may mean Christmas pudding at the start of summer by the time i get to retire.

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