Although California is not known for harsh winters or blazing 100 degree summers, evidence has made it apparent that seasons are beginning to shift, so that temperatures that once marked the start or end of a season now appear unpredictably, making it harder to tell where one season ends and another begins.
In recent years, California has faced record-breaking heatwaves and extreme weather alerts, according to NASA, with 2025 on track to become the second or third hottest year ever recorded. It’s no longer just a pattern. It’s a climate shift we are living through (nasa.gov).
According to Scientific America, seasonal patterns are shifting primarily because of global climate change, which is causing temperature shifts that alter the length and timing of seasonal weather patterns. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as “season creep,” where warmer temperatures expand into the traditional months of cooler seasons, blurring the lines between them. According to an article about climate change, “Spring is coming earlier…. The season starts an average of ten days earlier in the United States than it did just 20 years ago” (scientificamerican.com).
Although there are some changes occurring locally in California, according to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), temperatures, rainfall, and seasonal timing are all shifting globally. The changes are most pronounced in the Arctic and Subarctic regions, where rising temperatures are happening four times as fast as the global average. According to PBS news, “The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the past 43 years” (pbs.org).
Not only are global temperatures rising due to climate change, weather extremes such as heatwaves, droughts, and out of season storms are increasingly becoming common, according to the Science Department at NASA. This trend is directly linked to human-induced climate change. Global warming affects multiple atmospheric systems, making historically rare events more frequent and severe. NASA stated, “According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report released in 2021, the human-caused rise in greenhouse gases has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events” (science.nasa.gov).
The effects of these shifting seasons are not just happening far away. Students here on campus are feeling them too. Warmer temperatures have led to overheated classrooms, canceled outdoor activities, and even increased health concerns such as dehydration and fatigue, especially during P.E.. Sophomore Layal Aziz said, “This summer, the weather has been all over the place. One day it’s sweltering heat and the next I’m waking up to fogged windows.”
Furthermore, seasonal blending profoundly affects ecosystems and wildlife by disrupting natural cycles that species have adapted to over millennia, according to an article on the Conversation website about the effects of climate change on the natural world. These disruptions create mismatches in the timing of crucial life-cycle events, alter species’ distributions, and can destabilize entire ecosystems (theconversation.com).
According to the same article, “Spring is arriving earlier throughout the world’s temperate and polar regions, but the species that live there are responding differently to the season’s advance.… Some species are already starting to breed at different times relative to others they interact with — such as their prey.” This divergence in timing can cascade through the food web, undermining predator-prey balance and ecosystem resilience (theconversation.com).