After three glorious sixty-degree days in California, we returned to Schenectady just in time for a major winter storm. In mid-April. There's an inch or two of icy slush all over everything, and it's still raining. Whee!
It occurs to me again that what we're seeing locally from climate change feels more like a climate phase shift than a consistent warming. Yeah, December was really warm, but March and April have been cold and shitty. Summer extended well into September last year, but it didn't really get started until July-- teeth were chattering at our commencement ceremony last year in mid-June.
It's like somebody took the seasons and shifted them by a month or two. This weather would be unremarkable for early March, but it's unusually unpleasant for mid-April, and there's no real break in sight...
(Before you start with the nasty comments and emails, I'm well aware that weather is not climate, blah, blah, blah. This is not global warming denialism, and I'm not turning into everybody's favorite string theorist, it's just a half-serious qualitative comment.)
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Interesting note... I live in Ukraine (near the geographical center of Europe), and it seems to me like that too: the winter start is delayed by one-two month, and the summer starts a bit later as well.
Looks like if there is something really in that...
I'd be more inclined to blame this winter's weather on El Nino than on global-warming induced regional climate change. See, e.g., this presentation. They found that in El Nino years, at least in Syracuse, early winter is warmer than usual with less snow, and late winter is colder with more snow.
Didn't I hear somewhere that "global warming" COULD in fact lead to longer, harsher winters... as in... the average annual temp rises but at the same time the swing from Summer to Winter gets bigger? Or did I make that up?
Maybe the equinoxes and solstices just got confused and are showing up a month late?
dr. dave: Basically, "yes," but what we're whining about isn't the harshness of the winter, just the phase shift. Here at least, it was only really stupid-cold for about three or four weeks in February.
The seasons here in the North East are already shifted a month compared to what I'm used to. This is crazy (just spent two delightful hours shovelling a foot of wet snow from my driveway).
We here in the northeast seem to also be dealing with weather/climate phase transitions... moving sharply from one extreme to another. Just to extend the physics analogies a little far.