Dramatic temperature jumps marked this March and April in the U.S. Northeast, making it hard to know what to dress for: chilly or sweltering conditions? Researchers have concluded that wild temperature swings are becoming more common as the world heats up.
That’s changing how we experience spring, with plants blooming sooner and consumers rushing to buy more warm-weather goods earlier in the year.
Andra Garner, a meteorologist and climate scientist at Rowan University in New Jersey, was struck by the ups and downs of spring weather a few years ago. Finding herself switching back and forth between heating and air conditioning, she went on to research the matter.
From 1950 to 2019, New Jersey saw increasing variation in daily high and low temperatures in late winter and spring, Garner found in a 2024 study. She and her co-author, environmental scientist Dan Duran, also of Rowan, defined swings as changes from above 60 Fahrenheit (16 Celsius) to below 32 F (zero C).
Consider this April 23, when the temperature in New York City hit 73 F shortly before 4 p.m. — a full 28 degrees higher than it had been 12 hours earlier. On April 13, the high was 79 — 30 degrees above the overnight low — while on April 4 the temperature fell to 42 from 73. Those jumps are bigger than the month’s average daily fluctuation of 17 degrees at Central Park’s weather station. Fluctuations over multiple days are also growing larger.
Springtime weather is naturally wild. But the size of recent temperature shifts points to the influence of climate change, experts say.
“It’s not unusual to have such variability in the spring, but the extremes are a little more extreme,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program. “That’s always been a hallmark of what we expected in climate change.”
Greenhouse gas pollution, as well as kick-starting spring sooner in the year, may be adding spikiness to daily highs and lows. Temperatures are rising earlier across the Earth’s temperate band; a hotter Gulf of Mexico is pushing warm air north; a wobblier jet stream lets more cold Arctic air travel south. In other words, the ingredients are ripe for surprises.
More than 60% of the globe has experienced more common, intense and rapid temperature flips since 1961, a trend that is expected to worsen, according to a 2025 study in the journal Nature Communications. Extreme day-to-day temperature changes “are an independent, but largely ignored, aspect of extreme weather events” that may grow in frequency and intensity this century by 20%, a different team of researchers wrote last year.
“Recent studies suggest these whiplash events are increasingly frequent and will become more common in the future,” said Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, whose research documents how Arctic warming may be affecting Northern Hemisphere weather.
“So in terms of wardrobe-planning, be ready for anything, especially in New England,” Francis said.
Warmer temperatures earlier in the year can trigger a so-called false spring, in which plants begin growing earlier — and then may encounter a damaging late spring freeze that can undermine harvests.
This year, late April frosts have sparked concerns among farmers in New York and the mid-Atlantic about their fruit crops. In 2023, a March freeze in rural Georgia led to damages to as much as 98% of the commercial peach crop, costing growers nearly $120 million in peach losses alone.
But how bad the problem is, or will become, varies by geography. Within the U.S., false spring risk is projected to increase in the Great Plains and parts of the Midwest through 2100, while remaining steady or decreasing in other places.
So far, early springs are more likely to result in early budding and blooming in plants in March. But further global heating could lead that phenomenon to happen more in February, raising the chances of crop damage, Garner and Duran warned.
The wild swings show up not just in thermometer readings but in retail data. Demand for weather-sensitive items like air conditioners, fans and barbecue grills has surged early this year, says Evan Gold, executive vice president of global partnerships and alliances at Planalytics, a weather-focused analytics company.
“There’s more volatility today,” Gold said. “We see it in the data.”
Fast Retailing Co. Ltd., an operator of brands including Uniqlo, reacted quickly to unseasonably warm weather in December and February and was faster than other companies to roll out its spring and summer products, noted Jason Zhu, a contributing analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
But the effect also extends to fresh vegetables — people make more salads when it’s warmer out — and auto parts, tires and services, as mild temperatures cue drivers to work on their cars.
One company set to see a boost from warmer weather is Tractor Supply Co., a retail farm store chain, said Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Industry Analyst Lindsay Dutch. Dutch said it had been a “notably warm March” and called early spring conditions one of the company’s sales drivers.
Retailers that don’t have the requisite items in stock yet risk missing out on sales. But there’s a potential upside for stores that are prepared, Gold noted: The margin tends to be better on products sold earlier in the season, when there are fewer markdowns.
(Brian K Sullivan and Brad Skillman contributed.)