Is Climate Change Making Spring Disappear?

_Elsa_

Time moves on and it is now the end of April. The weather hasn’t changed much, although they haven’t had another snow storm. Elsa checks the outside thermometer and it’s showing zero degrees. Will winter ever end? She heads back online to see what information she can find out about spring. She heard that with climate change the seasons are getting shorter. Oh, there it is! She reads the article. 

‘Spring. By many’s estimation, it’s the most magical season of the year with its return of warmth and color and its promise of renewal. But increasingly, anecdotal tales of spring becoming shorter and shorter have started making the rounds, as well as speculation that climate change and global warming are to blame for the shortening of the gardener’s season. Is the idea that climate change is shortening spring fact or fiction or both? Today we’re taking a look. 

Firstly, Spring is Getting Shorter Anyway!

It probably shouldn’t surprise you that the answer to this question regarding global warming and climate change and whether or not they make spring shorter is multi-faceted. After all, as a world, we can’t even seem to agree that climate change exists! But there are facts out there, and there is historical data. 

The first interesting fact is that spring has been losing time to summer and autumn has been losing time to winter for many, many years already. And this has nothing to do with climate change, though it should make you feel great that you were not imagining it when you said that spring and fall felt like they were getting shorter each year. Spring starts at the exact moment of the vernal equinox, which is when the Earth’s axis reaches its halfway point and points neither directly at the sun (summer solstice) or directly away from the sun (winter solstice). And it ends on the summer solstice. But each year the summer solstice is happening about 30 seconds earlier, making spring gradually shorter and shorter by tiny amounts.’ (Source) 

But why is this happening?

The Earth's seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth on its axis (not by how close the planet is to the sun). This tilt of 23.5-degrees from the straight-up-and-down position means that for six months of the year, the Earth's Northern Hemisphere is leaning slightly toward the sun, whereas during the other six months, the Southern Hemisphere leans toward the sun.

The main reason spring is getting shorter is that the Earth's axis itself moves, much like a wobbling top, in a type of motion called precession.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Chu4-VlT0&feature=youtu.be

Spring ends at the summer solstice, and because of precession, the point along the Earth's orbit where the planet reaches the summer solstice shifts slightly.’ (Source)

“Well that might explain why spring weather hasn’t arrived yet,” Elsa thinks to herself. 

She continues her Google search.

Let’s continue - Some Say Climate Change Will Actually Make Spring Longer

Start at the beginning – The year that spring forgot