The planet’s seasons are not as immutable as previously thought. It turns out that there are parts of the world that have different seasonal timing than those regions even just a short distance away. This irregularity may have led to evolutionary changes in various ecosystems. Now, humans are also adding to the seasonal alterations, which could create fresh future consequences.
The Earth contains hot spots that are seasonally “asynchronous” with surrounding areas, according to a study published in the journal Nature. These spots are regions where the “timing of seasonal cycles can be out of sync between nearby locations”, said Dr Drew Terasaki Hart, an ecologist and the study’s author, on The Conversation. “These differences in timing can have surprising ecological, evolutionary and even economic consequences.”
Our current understanding of seasons comes from phenology, which is when people study the “timing of natural events, like when trees flower or animals migrate, simply by watching”, said space news site Orbital Today. The method “works well in much of Europe, North America and other high-latitude places with strong winters”, but can “struggle in the tropics and arid regions”, said Hart. The study expanded on seasonal observations by using satellite data. This allowed scientists to identify irregularities in their patterns that may not have been otherwise observed.
Unpredictable seasons are a result of climate change. The “scale and rapidity of changes to our planet’s biogeochemical cycles profoundly impact the sociopolitically interpreted (re)definitions of seasonal rhythms”, said the Progress in Environmental Geography study. “There used to be four seasons,” said Vice. “Now we have melting ones, burning ones, polluted ones and plastic ones.” | 
