Spring arriving earlier, study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Looking forward to spring? The good news is that it is coming two days earlier on average, but so are summer, autumn and winter, researchers said on Wednesday.

They found that on average, the hottest day of the year in temperate regions has moved forward by just under two days, and so has the coldest day of the year.

While the consequences of this shift are not clear, it is worrying, Alexander Stine of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues said.

“All of the seasons are coming earlier. They are both hotter and they are earlier,” Stine said in a telephone interview.

The effect can be seen in both the northern and southern hemispheres, said Stine, whose team studied more than 100 years of temperature data to tease out the pattern.

Reuters