As climate change causes winters to warm, the world becomes more and more like a tropical paradise, possibly meaning the end of the seasons as we know them. This could affect the global ecology by potentially affecting crops, insects, malaria transmission, and even confuse migration patterns of birds and mammals worldwide.
When scientists study climate change, they mostly focus on the change in global average temperature, but neglect to explore how temperature variability has altered with climate change. It is well known that warming temperatures will cause rising oceans and increased flooding, especially in coastal regions such as those in the United States, but what do varying temperatures mean for the changing seasons?
"We describe, for the first time, changes in temperature variability across the globe. We’ve had a long discussion about changes in the mean temperature. It has been ongoing for over 30 years," lead study author George Wang, postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany, said in a statement. "It’s very clear mean temperatures have shifted across the globe. It’s less clear if the variation in temperature has changed."