Gorgeous animation of how the seasons on Earth change during the winter solstice.

Each December, the winter solstice marks the official start of astronomical winter in the northern hemisphere and marks the shortest day of the year.

This year, the winter solstice took place, as usual, on December 21 at 21:48 GMT, which means that from now on, for the northern hemisphere, every next day will be longer than the previous one for the next six months.

Astronomers believe that billions of years ago, an object the size of Mars collided with Earth, causing our planet to tilt, which is the tilt of the planet Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the column in the plane of rotation in which the planets revolve around the sun.

And this ancient outcrop gave rise to Earth’s seasons – seasons that have very specific weather patterns and daylight hours that change with latitude.

In most places, there are four distinct seasons or seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Eleanor Lutz, now the graphic editor of The New York Times, converted available data from NASA, USGS and Natural Earth into Animation from 2019 showing how the seasons change. with the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

“I have always been very interested in projects that combine science and art,” Lutz told Business Insider.

Animated map: visualization of the seasons on Earth. Eleanor Lutz | A source: https://t.co/6mKSBCBTrzS#cards#geographyrice.twitter.com/Lmz9WqMXqe

— MapAddict (@AddictMap) December 21, 2022

The graph shows how seasonal changes in precipitation and temperature affect the Earth’s ice, vegetation, cloud cover, and sunlight.

And NASA explains that the Earth is currently tilted 23.4 degrees relative to the plane in which most objects in the solar system revolve around the Sun. This means that because our planet moves in a nearly circular orbit around the sun, different parts of the globe receive different amounts of sunlight throughout the year.

Great animation shows how Earth changes with seasons https://t.co/MtEaygCuhA

— Insider Science (@insiderscience) December 21, 2022

The earth is divided into northern and southern halves by an “imaginary” ring called the equator. When the northern hemisphere leans towards the sun in June, summer arrives. This is when the sun’s rays fall directly on this part of the earth, which leads to an increase in the temperature of the earth’s surface. When it is summer in the northern hemisphere, it is winter in the southern hemisphere.

Six months later, in December, the situation is reversed as the northern hemisphere leans away from the sun and there is winter weather.

The tilt of the earth’s axis also determines the length of daylight hours, which are the shortest in each hemisphere in winter. Even more exciting is what is happening at the poles of the planet, beyond the Arctic Circle.

In Utqiagvik in Alaska, the northernmost city in the US, darkness lasts from mid-November to mid-January.

Closer to the equator, the seasons are less clear because the sun rises at roughly the same angle each day. There, the length of the day remains about 12 hours in all seasons.

The tilt of the Earth is relatively stable, but there are small shifts on large time scales (tens of thousands of years). According to NASA, the angle is slowly decreasing.

Source: Business Insider

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