New research shows that most Americans prefer the warmer winters they’ve been experiencing in recent decades as a result of climate change, particularly since the milder winter temperatures haven’t been accompanied by more scorching summers.

That’s about to change, scientists say.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, found that “80 percent of Americans live in counties that are experiencing more pleasant weather than they did four decades ago. Virtually all Americans are now experiencing the much milder winters that they typically prefer, and these mild winters have not been offset by markedly more uncomfortable summers or other negative changes.”

A climate scientist not involved in the study hypothesized that the “population may have been lulled into complacency when it comes to the impacts of climate change by the fact that perceived weather conditions have improved with the moderate warming of the past century.”

“Americans experienced pronounced winter warming between 1974 and 2013: a regression of daily maximum January temperatures on year estimated a population-weighted average increase of 0.58°C per decade,” the study found, while “daily maximum July temperatures rose by only 0.07°C per decade.”

“Climate change models predict that this trend is temporary, however,” the researchers say, and summers in the U.S. will soon outpace winters in terms of warming.

By the end of the century, 88 percent of Americans will be experiencing what they perceive to be worsening weather, the study found.

The predicted worsening of America’s weather will likely have ramifications on policy, as “public concern may rise once people’s everyday experiences of climate change effects start to become less pleasant,” the researchers wrote.

The U.S. is one of the world’s worst emitters of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, and so American policy plays a critical role in global efforts to combat a rapidly warming planet.

But a change in public sentiment by 2100 may not come soon enough to save the planet. Another study released Thursday in the journal Earth System Dynamics found that the difference between warming of 2°C as opposed to 1.5°C will herald “a shift into a new, more dangerous climate regime,” as the Guardian writes, while other research shows that we may be on track to warm the planet more than 3°C if we do not take drastic action.