Why is it that the later months of the summertime end up being the hottest , even though daylight hours are shortening ? likewise , the arse - end of wintertime always seems to feel much more acrimonious than it did in the so - called bleak in-between part . The name of this oddity ? Seasonal lag .
Defining seasonal lag
Seasonal lag is the warm mode of tell that the date of the maximum average melodic phrase temperature – the hottest sidereal day of the year – occurs afterthe date of maximum solar intensity , which happens on the summersolstice .
For representative , San Francisco saw its hottest day of 2024 in earlyOctober , over three months after June 21 , the appointment of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere .
The phenomenon also exercise the other way around ; the date of the minimum fair air temperature , or coldest day , happen a while after theshortest twenty-four hours of the yearbrings the minimal solar intensiveness .
Why does seasonal lag happen?
The elementary reason for seasonal lag is that Earth is , well … very watery . In fact , about 71 percentof its surface is covered by the stuff and nonsense , and it play akey rolein regulating our mood by evaporate and increasing the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere .
However , to reach the gunpoint where it ’s red-hot enough to do so requires a significant amount of energy , live as mellow heating electrical capacity .
One way to well understand it , as climate scientist Karen McKinnon explained toThe Washington Post , is by thinking about what encounter when you assay to heat up some piddle on your kitchen stove – it does n’t boil as before long as you put the heat on .
“ If you think about seek to roil a heap of piss , you could turn on the fire under the water , but weewee has a pretty mellow high temperature capacity , and so it takes a full amount of sentence after you put the heat into the piss for the water supply temperature to really increase and then come to a boiling point . ”
Now suppose your pot of water is actually the Earth , and you could begin to see why it convey much longer for the weather to become warm than we might first take . Similarly , it also deal a good while to cool back down again .
Landalso play a rolein regulating mood and temperature , and thus also bring to seasonal lag , but to a much lesser stage than water – not just because there ’s less land than there is water , but because it has a lower oestrus capacity too .
