{"id":2181,"date":"2017-10-31T01:50:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T01:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/duenos.net\/?p=2181"},"modified":"2020-02-02T06:01:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T06:01:18","slug":"have-the-seasons-really-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/have-the-seasons-really-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Have the seasons really changed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a small child I remember the weather in Illinois being quite different. Everyone I know talks about global warming as an accepted reality and something that&#8217;s bigger than our individual anecdotal experiences of climate but I can&#8217;t help get over being hung up on my personal relationship to the weather, it feels more meaningful than charts and graphs. As a kid I remembered winters full of deep snow (I&#8217;d build forts and snowmen) and falls that are were a pleasant temperate period for 2 months. Now it seems like we have frigid winters without snow, blazing humid summers and spring and fall are really only 2 weeks long. They also seem like they&#8217;ve shifted. As a kid this is how I remember it going:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Summer &#8211; June, July, August<\/li>\n<li>Fall &#8211; September, October, November<\/li>\n<li>Winter &#8211; December, January, February<\/li>\n<li>Spring &#8211; March, April, May<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now I think it&#8217;s more like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Summer &#8211; June, July, August, September<\/li>\n<li>Fall &#8211; October<\/li>\n<li>Winter &#8211; November, December, January, February, March<\/li>\n<li>Spring &#8211; April, May<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The joke here at UIUC is that &#8220;spring&#8221; break is really just winter break part 2, as it happens in mid-march when it seems to always be in the 20&#8217;s and 30&#8217;s. The school year is no longer aligned well with the seasons. Now I realize there are many possibilities here, I lived in the Chicago suburbs, which had lake effects, and it&#8217;s possible that since I was outside a lot more as a kid my perceptions were simply different. I also might be less tolerant to the cold now. But the real answer, of course, can be found with real measurements (science!). Let&#8217;s look at some comparisons (sourced from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wunderground.com\/\">weather underground<\/a>) 1993-96 vs 2013-16 for average temperature (red) and dew point (green):<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2183\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1993-300x56.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"56\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2186\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/2013-300x56.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"56\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2182\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1994-300x56.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"56\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2187\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/2014-300x56.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"56\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2184\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1995-300x58.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"58\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2188\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/2015-300x60.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"60\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2185\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1996-300x57.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"57\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"236\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2189\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/2016-300x58.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"58\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>So this is rather dissatisfying, as it would seem the change has been mostly in my head. There&#8217;s potentially a little shit to later in the year, but really barely any. Reading around the web seemed to confirm this, as most websites spoke about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/lifestyles\/sns-green-climate-change-shift-story.html\">shifts over the course of 50 years<\/a> (not 20). I compared Urbana&#8217;s records to Chicago&#8217;s and found they were about the same, too.<br \/>\nSo it looks like this one must be predominantly in my imagination. While I can definitely say &#8220;fall&#8221; weather (45-65 degrees) in 2017 was only a couple of weeks it&#8217;s not the case in the grand scheme of things. Still, I was looking forward to spending more time on my porch this fall, I really only got 3 days out there :\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a small child I remember the weather in Illinois being quite different. Everyone I know talks about global warming as an accepted reality and something that&#8217;s bigger than our individual anecdotal experiences of climate but I can&#8217;t help get over being hung up on my personal relationship to the weather, it feels more meaningful [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[68,71,140,231,235,349,366,396],"class_list":["post-2181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jag-wire","category-reflection","tag-childhood","tag-climate","tag-fall","tag-measurement","tag-metrics","tag-spring","tag-temperature","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2212,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions\/2212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}