Season Shift?

Please don't get political. But I've noticed last year and this year that we're getting high-summer weather in Spring. And tonight, in early June, here in SoNE, we're under a "heat dome." And sitting out on my deck I'm hearing bugs chirping that we don't normally hear until August. So that seems strange.

Is anyone else experiencing premature high-summer phenomena?

PS: I'm not saying it's a bad thing, because I'm enjoying sitting outside listening to August sounds in early June! Seems like it makes the summer (my favorite season) last longer.

We went from freezing cold to 90 and 150% humidity in the last month. It frosted only 3 weeks ago. Before the late frost we had a beautiful month of spring though.

Not looking forward to August. 

Our weather changes so often and so wildly it isn't particularly noticable. We were in the upper 80s and humid today. Pretty normal for this time of year.

I would love some unseasonably cold weather right now. About 3 months of it would be perfect. 

Remember 70 degrees? I do. Now it goes from 55 to 82 in the span of 10 days. 

I've been reading a lot about solar activity and how we are in a low period. The low sun spot and solar winds let the jet stream get more wavy and it tends to take weather from north to south and back as it moves west to east.

NASA and others are predicting we are heading into a Grand Solar Minimum.  I'm still trying to figure out how much that will affect us in the next 20 years but it doesn't sound like warming is going to be an issue for a while.

I'm not a scientist with a huge grant so I only dig so deep. Information is worth what you paid for it, lol.

For the last few years I've noticed two things: the lack of spring and fall, and (because if that) the shifting of summer and winter. 
at least that's the way is seems. The nice, cool days of fall have been replaced by frigid weather that's usually 6 weeks later. And the delightfully warm days of spring have been replaced by sweat-drenched underwear. 

I heard a good name for this on the radio-S'pummer. 

96 today in Minneapolis, we had a 97 and a 99 in the last few days.  About 20 degrees above normal.

DrBoost said:

For the last few years I've noticed two things: the lack of spring and fall

It seems that way here as well.  The gradual change of seasons has been replaced with a light switch - on or off.

I am pretty sure we were in a somewhat long solar minimum rather recently also (a few years ago?)

In So Cal, it's pretty average.  Currently in June gloom, which is normal, but doesn't always happen.  Very dry winter, but that's not uncommon either, a year ago it was super wet.  Last summer got super hot (for a short time), hopefully we don't do that again.

I have not noticed any increase in season changes, but then again, when they do change, it's normally not by that much anyway.

The only consistent thing about weather is change.

edit:  looks like we were in a minimum last year and are on an upswing now:

The maximums of each cycle also matter.  Here is the last 400 years.  You can see the last 60 years or so have had quite a bit of activity, seems to coincide with  temps warming up.  Temps during the Maunder Minimum, also known as part of the "Little Ice Age", were lower.

jgrewe said:

it doesn't sound like warming is going to be an issue for a while.

The last 40 years doesn't look great if you plot surface temperature vs solar activity:

In reply to red_stapler :

I love graphs. That is pretty interesting, I went out on the net a learned about the GISTEMP  source.  I was happy to see they have tried to adjust for the urban heat gain over the last 20 years or so.  A lot of the surface measuring sites have become unreliable because of various man made influences. There was a guy a few years back that was documenting how screwed up they were getting. He found them next to a big new parking lot, AC condensers for a new building a few yards away, things like that. Even the paint used on them had a spec and hadn't been followed over the years.

Even GISTEMP is an estimate though. I take computer models with a grain of salt when it comes to weather. 25 models try to figure out where a hurricane is going to be is 5 days and they will place the storm 500+ miles one way or the other.  The models run 0ver the years on what the temp was going to be now all predicted higher temps than we have, I think one was lower than actual temps now.  

Keep the info coming!

edit: I kept reading about GISTEMP and saw the huge increase in stations from 1000 to 26,000 over the years. I wonder if the warming shown is the model getting more accurate with more data?

May was oddly a bit cooler than usual here in Georgia - still clearly spring though.

PA sucks right now! HOT, HUMID and rain. My freakin' grass is growing so quickly I can't even wait until Saturday to do it again, I will have to mow on Thursday or risk plugging up the bagger if I wait until the weekend. Oh well, the things we have to do for a nice lawn!

I found this graph that seems to show a different path for the sun than red_stapler's. I wonder if the difference between using "Total" Solar Irradiance and Solar Irradiance is the reason.  The visible and ultraviolet ranges have the biggest effect but there is a lot of other energy coming from the sun.

Like others that have posted, I have also noticed the lack of spring and fall.  In the decade I spent in Baltimore I saw the winters get warmer as well (although I would say 10 years of personal experience does not count as scientific proof of anything)

Global temperatures are increasing.  As they increase, it creates more erratic weather patterns.  We can expect more storms, more freak cold fronts involving the polar vortex (a term I had never even heard until several years ago), and hotter summers.  I miss spring and autumn.  

jgrewe said:

I found this graph that seems to show a different path for the sun than red_stapler's. 

They effectively present the same data, but the Y axis values for solar activity cover a narrower range, which would make differences appear larger.

Here are a few grains of salt as we look at graphs.  My son watched this and ended up schooling his science teacher twice when he was shown graphs that used the tricks shown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU

Ironically in Maryland the past two years we've actually had a 4-7 week long spring. I had grown used to snow at some point in March and it touching 90 while still in March, and that hasn't happened. We had a sustained span of weeks with highs between 56-84 with more than 80% of those days between 60-76. 

That being said, summer and all it's humidity is here, but it's June. I don't think it touched 75 here on memorial day weekend. 

I recall in my youth getting rediculous levels of sunburn and dehydration from Preakness Saturdays and HFStivals that felt like they were 110 (they were likely in the low to mid 90s) as much talk as the dog days of August get, June heat just hits different around here, same goes for late September humidity. A warm 86 degree day in late September here will be a swamp with a few point in the 70s. 

I live in New England.

/mic drop

In reply to jgrewe :

Does the guy that makes those videos have any peer-reviewed papers about his claims, or is he just a blogger/vlogger?

What about the people that made that graph-were their findings published in a journal? Do any of them have advanced degrees in physics or climate science?

Florida has been mild so far this year but weather isn't climate, etc.

I pulled this from his website. He doesn't claim to be a climate scientist. Someone points out the the current and former chairmen of the IPCC aren't climate scientists either. He looks, to me, to be a little more qualified to discuss the subject than Al Gore at least. I just appreciate his use of technology. The graphs he is taking apart were used in some presentation, I don't know who put it together or what it was for.  I think it is in the start of the video. The fact he could find the full data sets used was the point that stuck with me so the graphs are from something published.

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