Scientists have discovered that the seasons on Earth have a strange anomaly: it affects all living things 0 10

Scientists have observed the changing seasons on our planet from space and found that spring, summer, winter, and autumn are surprisingly out of sync. The fact that two places are in the same hemisphere, at similar elevations, or at the same latitude does not guarantee that they will experience the same seasonal changes simultaneously, the researchers say. The study is published in the journal Nature, writes ScienceAlert.

Using satellite data over 20 years, the scientists created what they describe as the most comprehensive map of seasonal changes in Earth's terrestrial ecosystems to date. It turned out that even regions located nearby can experience different weather and ecological conditions, forming entirely different neighboring habitats. This is similar to how time zones can separate two adjacent places, but in this case, the boundary is drawn by nature itself.

According to the scientists, seasons are often perceived as a simple rhythm—winter, spring, summer, autumn—but the new research shows that nature's calendar is much more complex. This is especially true for regions where the shape and timing of the typical local seasonal cycle vary sharply across the landscape. This can have serious implications for the ecology and evolution of living organisms in these regions.

The new map revealed global regions where seasonal patterns are particularly out of sync, and this asynchrony is often observed in biodiversity hotspots. This is likely not a coincidence. Greater variability in weather conditions may have a cascading effect that could promote greater diversity within the habitats of living organisms. For example, if natural resources in two neighboring habitats become available at different times of the year, it could impact the ecology and evolution of the flora and fauna in each.

This could even mean that a species in one location reaches its reproductive season earlier or later than the same species in a neighboring location, hindering crossbreeding. Over many generations, this could lead to the evolution of two completely different species.

One of the intriguing patterns discovered by the scientists is that in five Mediterranean regions of the Earth, with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers, forest growth cycles peaked about two months later than in other ecosystems. This discrepancy was also observed in places like California, Chile, South Africa, and southern Australia. The new map also shows differences in the timing of plant flowering and the readiness of crops for harvest.

Today, many ecological forecasts are based on simple models of Earth's seasons, but if we truly want to understand how the climate crisis will affect our planet, we need to account for differences from place to place, even if they are close to each other, the scientists say. According to the researchers, climate models that make general assumptions about seasons do not capture the full extent of the vast diversity of our planet.