Bob CollinsIf the sun could talk, it might be saying, “that’s nothing.”
The heat wave continues across the United States and the sun isn’t even trying. It is — or at least it was yesterday — as far away from the earth as it gets.
The sun reached “aphelion” just after midnight yesterday.
This relationship to temperatures, of course, isn’t really relevant since the closest the sun gets to us — perihelion, if you’re keeping score — occurs in January, the Inquisitr says.
The sun during aphelion is 3,104,641 miles farther from the sun than during the perihelion phase. Despite receiving 7 percent less radiant heat during this period we continue to experience record heat. The reason for the continued heat is that the current warm weather is tied to the Earth’s 23.5-degree tilt which puts the sun above the horizon for varying lengths of time during the different seasons. The tilt of Earth determines how the sun’s rays strike each place on earth based on a direct or low angle approach to Earth.
Last winter, when most people in the United States were experiencing a mild winter, other parts of the world were experiencing record cold. That fact alone kept the “it must be global warming” chatter to a minimum.
What’s going on in the rest of the world this summer?
Moscow set their all-time record high temperature last Thursday when it hit 101.
It was 81 Wednesday in Paris, about 8 degrees higher than the average temperature but nowhere near a record.
It’s 97 in Budapest where the sun is on the way down. That’s 20 degrees higher than the average temperature.
Last month in Bucharest, that was one of the cities with record cold last winter, the mean temperature was 78, six degrees above the average. They also had 4 heating degree days last month, but it was 95 there today (they’re 8 hours ahead of us). There’s a heat wave warning in effect.
It was 91 in Warsaw where the average high for this date is about 75.
London is the outlier here, where it only got up to 68 today, five degrees below the average. Meanwhile, Seoul had a high of 86, which is about normal.
And in Pamplona, Spain — where they’re running the bulls this weekend — it’ll be 84 and rainy tomorrow, which isn’t out of the ordinary.
Of course, it’s winter in the southern hemisphere. How’s that going for them? Fairly normally, temperature wise in South America. And the ski resorts are reporting great snow conditions in Australia and New Zealand.
Somewhere, perhaps, someone’s summer vacation is being ruined by unusually blustery weather for this time of the year. But you’ll have to work to find it.
