A Text-Book of Astronomy

by George C. Comstock

Observe the fluctuations, the ebb and flow, which are inherent in this process. From sunset to sunrise there is nothing to compensate the steady outflow of heat, and air and ground grow steadily colder, but with the sunrise there comes an influx of solar heat, feeble at first because it strikes the earth's surface very obliquely, but becoming more and more efficient as the sun rises higher in the sky. But as the air and the ground grow warm during the morning hours they part more and more readily and rapidly with their store of heat, just as a steam pipe or a cup of coffee radiates heat more rapidly when very hot. The warmest hour of the day is reached when these opposing tendencies of income and expenditure of heat are just balanced; and barring such disturbing factors as wind and clouds, the gain in temperature usually extends to the time—an hour or two beyond noon—at which the diminishing altitude of the sun renders his rays less efficient, when radiation gains the upper hand and the temperature becomes for a short time stationary, and then commences to fall steadily until the next sunrise.

We have here an example of what is called a periodic change—i. e., one which, within a definite and uniform period (24 hours), oscillates from a minimum up to a maximum temperature and then back again to a minimum, repeating substantially the same variation day after day. But it must be understood that minor causes not taken into account above, such as winds, water, etc., produce other fluctuations from day to day which sometimes obscure or even obliterate the diurnal variation of temperature caused by the sun.

Expose the back of your hand to the sun, holding the hand in such a position that the sunlight strikes perpendicularly upon it; then turn the hand so that the light falls quite obliquely upon it and note how much more vigorous is the warming effect of the sun in the first position than in the second. It is chiefly this difference of angle that makes the sun's warmth more effective when he is high up in the sky than when he is near the horizon, and more effective in summer than in winter.

We have seen in [Chapter III] that the sun's motion among the stars takes place along a path which carries it alternately north and south of the equator to a distance of 23.5°, and the stars show by their earlier risings and later settings, as we pass from the equator toward the north pole of the heavens, that as the sun moves northward from the equator, each day in the northern hemisphere will become a little longer, each night a little shorter, and every day the sun will rise higher toward the zenith until this process culminates toward the end of June, when the sun begins to move southward, bringing shorter days and smaller altitudes until the Christmas season, when again it is reversed and the sun moves northward. We have here another periodic variation, which runs its complete course in a period of a year, and it is easy to see that this variation must have a marked effect on the warming of the earth, the long days and great altitudes of summer producing the greater warmth of that season, while the shorter days and lower altitudes of December, by diminishing the daily supply of solar heat, bring on the winter's cold. The succession of the seasons, winter following summer and summer winter, is caused by the varying altitude of the sun, and this in turn is due to the obliquity of the ecliptic, or, what is the same thing, the amount by which the axis of the earth is tipped from being perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, and the seasons are simply a periodic change in the warming of the earth, quite comparable with the diurnal change but of longer period.

It is evident that the period within which the succession of winter and summer is completed, the year, as we commonly call it, must equal the time required by the sun to go from the vernal equinox around to the vernal equinox again, since this furnishes a complete cycle of the sun's motions north and south from the equator. On account of the westward motion of the equinox (precession) this is not quite the same as the time required for a complete revolution of the earth in its orbit, but is a little shorter (20m. 23s.), since the equinox moves back to meet the sun.

48. Relation of the sun to climate.—It is clear that both the northern and southern hemispheres of the earth must have substantially the same kind of seasons, since the motion of the sun north and south affects both alike; but when the sun is north of the equator and warming our hemisphere most effectively, his light falls more obliquely upon the other hemisphere, the days there are short and winter reigns at the time we are enjoying summer, while six months later the conditions are reversed.

In those parts of the earth near the equator—the torrid zone—there is no such marked change from cold to warm as we experience, because, as the sun never gets more than 23.5° away from the celestial equator, on every day of the year he mounts high in the tropic skies, always coming within 23.5° of the zenith, and usually closer than this, so that there is no such periodic change in the heat supply as is experienced in higher latitudes, and within the tropics the temperature is therefore both higher and more uniform than in our latitude.

In the frigid zones, on the contrary, the sun never rises high in the sky; at the poles his greatest altitude is only 23.5°, and during the winter season he does not rise at all, so that the temperature is here low the whole year round, and during the winter season, when for weeks or months at a time the supply of solar light is entirely cut off, the temperature falls to a degree unknown in more favored climes.

If the obliquity of the ecliptic were made 10° greater, what would be the effect upon the seasons in the temperate zones? What if it were made 10° less?

Does the precession of the equinoxes have any effect upon the seasons or upon the climate of different parts of the earth?