You don't need a groundhog to predict when spring will come next year. Scientists say it'll arrive sooner than ever—but there's a pretty big catch.
NBC News reports that researchers at the University of Wisconsin say climate change will lead to an earlier spring, year after year, indefinitely. Spring plants have started popping up earlier and earlier over the past several decades, in every region of the country. That means that winter's misery is getting shorter and shorter, too. In 100 years, spring may arrive as much as three weeks earlier.
But there's a serious dark side to the shortened winter, and it could decimate the lovely flowers we've come to associate with spring. In areas like the Midwest and Plains states, the weather change could cause "false springs," quick bursts of warm weather that cause plants to start blooming, and then quickly fade back to freezing, stunting the plants' growth. It could also create a mismatch between when plants are available and when the animals that need them to survive are around.
"Our projections show that winter will be shorter — which sounds great for those of us in Wisconsin," author Andrew Allstadt said in a statement. "But long distance migratory birds, for example, time their migration based on day length in their winter range. They may arrive in their breeding ground to find that the plant resources that they require are already gone." The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, points to climate change as the culprit, and warns farmers that they'll have to adapt as the seasons differ from year to year.
So while it's great that warm weather will start earlier, the things that are so great about spring—chirping birds and colorful plants—might not be there to accompany it.