
Don’t Believe the Hype: Winter Did Not Begin Yesterday - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/dont-believe-the-hype-winter-does-not-begin-tonight
======
Jedd
Rest assured, those of us here in the southern hemisphere are not susceptible
to that kind of hype.

In AU summer very much started (both officially and by popular understanding)
23 days ago - as it does every year - on the 1st of December.

Having seasons that match calendar months is _terribly_ convenient. It also
aligns with our experience of hot and cold -- January is typically the hottest
month (the middle of the three summer months) and July is typically the
coldest month (the middle of the three winter months). At least in the more
populous urban areas of Straya.

The British approach of starting a season on the solstice / equinox has always
seemed somewhere between weird and quaint (more towards the inconvenient end
of weird).

Not least because the shortest / longest / median day varies drastically - I
think up to 4 days variance? - depending on where we are in the leap year
cycle, but also (IIRC) based on where you're standing in relation to the
dateline.

I wonder what the appeal is of sticking to variant, non-calendar delineation
of seasons? (I appreciate that's what the article attempts to explore .. but
they don't seem to answer the question.) The author suggests January and July
are the months with the most extreme temperature, so it presumably isn't
related to any north / south hemisphere landmass disparity skewing
temperatures.

~~~
famous
Hi. I wrote the article. To tell you the truth, I've not (yet) found a reason
why people in some places (it seems to be mainly North America and some in the
UK) define seasons as beginning on solstices and equinoxes. Everyone just
seems to repeat that that's when the seasons start, even if they acknowledge
that there are other definitions.

I'd be curious if anyone finds a good explanation of why and how this
definition took root!

~~~
jerf
I hypothesize that it is because we can predict the astronomical days
centuries in advance, which in particular means that we can print calendars
with "start of $SEASON" days on them with no fear that weather or something
will contradict them.

I live in Michigan, which has a highly unstable climate. In practice as it
happens right now, we're really more in "late Fall" than what we'd usually
call "winter". Other years, winter has come in early November. Only the
astronomical events are predictable in advance.

I offer as evidence the fact that the primary place I encounter these dates is
on calendars. And once they are there, I think we have very little left to be
explained; trusting words that appear to source from an authority even over
the direct personal experience of our own eyes is a very common problem.

------
alkonaut
In which culture is this considered the "first day of winter"? English/US? I
knew that the mid summer (longest day) was called "the first day of summer" in
English and always though it was just an oddity in the language (like
inflammable and flammable...)

The reason we celebrate christmas in late december is because old pagan _mid-
winter_ festivals used to be around this time. Sure the coldest winter weather
is probably a month or so away still, but it's sure closer to the middle of
the winter than the start, even if you count temperature and not sunlight?

~~~
headstorm
The summer solstice marks the beginning of summer astronomically just as the
winter solstice marks the beginning of astronomical winter.

Midsummer is celebrated on the longest day in some cultures, on the solstice
in others, but does not denote the middle of astronomical summer.

Meteorologic summer and winter currently begin weeks before the solstice.
[https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/meteorological-versus-
astrono...](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/meteorological-versus-astronomical-
summer%E2%80%94what%E2%80%99s-difference) has a discussion on the difference.

~~~
alkonaut
So "astronomical summer" oddly _starts_ with the day that the incoming solar
energy is highest in the northern hemisphere? Ok, that explains why it's used
in English, but really it just uses the same definition! The meteorological
calendar just appears to use three months, so that is pretty arbitrary.

The most logical definition of astronomical summer and winter imho would have
been winter and summer being the quarter-years _centered_ on the summer and
winter solstice respectively. Then the astronomical definitions would have
been in line with (non-english) language, i.e. mid winter is the shortest day
and mid summer is the longest day.

> Midsummer is celebrated on the longest day in some cultures, on the solstice
> in others

Aren't those the same thing (maybe give or take a day)? Where I live it's
celebrated on a weekend near the solstice, which makes even more sense because
alcohol.

~~~
MAGZine
> So "astronomical summer" oddly starts with the day that the incoming solar
> energy is highest in the northern hemisphere?

In a way, but you're looking at the effect, not the cause. The solstice is the
day where either day or night is the shortest, which is caused by the earth
either being at the aphelion or the perihelion (i.e. nearest or farthest
points from the sun).

One could reasonably suspect that the solstice dates better represent a period
just before the centre of the season rather than the beginning of it, since
seasons take a bit of time to move in (at least up here in Canada). Snow won't
stay until the ground has cooled enough, for example.

~~~
fzappa1
Aphelion and perihelion do not have anything to do with the solstices. They
are currently coincidentally 2 weeks apart, but will be months apart in
several thousand years.

[http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/perihelion-aphelion-
sol...](http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/perihelion-aphelion-
solstice.html)

------
mixmastamyk
Hmm, the author doesn't appear to realize that seasons lag the
solstices/equinoxes by a month or more. This happens because the ocean soaks
up the heat or cold... one of the properties of water. That's why we push them
back half a season.

Whether your city is a maritime one or not is also a factor. For example, this
year in California, summer went until the middle of October even though the
sun was not very high at that point.

[http://water.usgs.gov/edu/heat-capacity.html](http://water.usgs.gov/edu/heat-
capacity.html)

~~~
famous
I'm the author. (Hi!) The temperature extremes definitely do lag the solstices
by around a month. That's not covered explicitly in the piece but implied when
I say that the coldest quarter of the year (for the Northern Hemisphere) is
from early Dec to early March, putting the temperature trough in the middle,
in late January. That lag is well-represented in the meteorological seasons I
suggest using: Dec-Feb (centered on January, the coldest month), Mar-May, etc.

Coastal California is indeed one of the few places in northern temperate
latitudes where summer goes that late; some of Japan is in the same boat. Even
so, December, January, and February are the coldest three months in SF, LA,
and Tokyo, which supports the idea that meteorological winter makes a lot of
sense.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Climate)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#Climate)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Hi, well given that seasons are fuzzy, does it really matter whether the
seasons start on the first or twenty first? If we really cared, I suppose
another solution would be to move the months over a week or two.

------
rquantz
Well, it's not like starting winter on December 1 isn't a lie as well –
average "meteorological winter" starts Dec 8, a week later. The coldest
quarter is also, of course, different every year, and not known until after
the fact.

We use astronomical seasons instead because they are predictable, they are
basically the same every year, and they definitively take place on a given
date.

For the question of starting winter on the solstice vs halfway between
solstice and equinox, we do get more cold weather after solstice than before.
I think this is less important though – starting halfway between has made
sense to me ever since I was a kid and learned what solstice and equinox
meant.

~~~
famous
A well-intentioned lie! Actually I'd call it more of an approximation. And the
meteorological definition (Dec-Feb) is a better approximation of the coldest
quarter than is starting the season on the solstice or on the cross-quarter
day, in early November.

You cite predictability and definitiveness of starting the season on the
solstice, but the meteorological season is better there, too.

~~~
rquantz
Not actually, because in reality the coldest dates are different every year,
and may change with global warming to boot. Start talking about meteorological
seasons, and we can start arguing about what data to use. Does every climate
region get their own definition of winter? Or do we use a one size fits all
definition for an entire hemisphere? Do we go with an average of surface
temperatures since they've been recorded, or do we use a running average of
the last ten or twenty years? Do we use only surface temperatures, or should
we take ocean temperatures into account as well?

And then you say, well, we'll just do an approximation and say Dec 1, but then
you've chosen a truly arbitrary date that, again, is just as approximate to
the "actual" meteorological date as Dec 22, and is off by close to the same
amount.

Edit: because this post sounds pretty vehement, I just want to leaven it by
saying that I recognize that all of these things are essentially arbitrary and
this is not, in the end, a topic that is actually extremely important to me. I
do think it's worthwhile to point out that the meteorological seasons are not
as clearly better as this article makes them out to be. There are reasons for
using astronomical winter, and they aren't really any worse than the reasons
for using meteorological winter, as far as I can tell.

------
coliveira
The author just doesn't understand the history of these concepts. The months
really used to coincide with the begging of the seasons for traditional
western calendars such as the Julian calendar, when it was introduced (it
later became incorrect because seasonal drifts were not readjusted). It was
the introduction of the Gregorian calendar that shifted dates, resulting in
the beginning of seasons at the "wrong" date (the Gregorian calendar skipped
dates on purpose). Since the Gregorian calendar autocorrects, this drift is
not going away and we are stuck with seasons that start at around the 21st of
the month. Defining the seasons according to the equinoxes is not only
logical, it is the definition used for thousands of years it just turns out
that our modern calendars don't respect these dates.

~~~
famous
Author here. That's an interesting claim -- that the solstices and equinoxes
used to fall on the first days of the month. (At least, I think that's what
you're implying.) But I'm not sure that checks out: The Julian and Gregorian
calendar diverge by 3 days every 400 hundred years. When the Gregorian
calendar was adopted at various times in various countries, it skipped forward
between 10 and 13 days ([http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-
switch....](http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-
switch.html)). That's not enough days to explain why the equinoxes and
solstices fall 20 or 21 days after the first of the month. Do you have a
source for this?

Moreover, I argue that if you want to use astronomical seasons, it doesn't
make much sense to begin them on the solstices and equinoxes -- they should
begin near the "cross-quarter" days halfway in between (around the 7th of
March, May, August, and November). And that is indeed how the seasons used to
be defined in many cultures, such that Midsummer and Yule, the midwinter
holiday, each came near the solstice.

~~~
coliveira
This is not something that can be "proven" in the sense that all early
calendars had drifts that had to be "manually" fixed over time. But we know
that the Roman year started officially at the Spring equinox, so that was a
calibration point [1]. The first serious attempt to fix the calendar was done
by Julio Cesar, but by then he was stuck with the Winter Equinox at Dec 25th
(our traditional date for Xmas). When the church introduced the Gregorian
calendar their goal was to go back to the dates established for Easter around
the year 300 CE, that's why they decided to jump ~10 days in the calendar.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Calendar_of_Rom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Calendar_of_Romulus)

~~~
famous
OK, the piece really isn't about how pre-Julian calendars defined the seasons
or how and when they may have gone off the rails. It's an argument for why [1]
meteorological seasons, starting a few weeks before the solstices/equinoxes,
is the way to go, and [2] even if you are adamant about strictly astronomical
seasons, beginning them on cross-quarter days makes more sense than _the
system we use now_. One system used over 2,000 years ago doesn't figure into
it.

------
Aardwolf
I think this matches reality more closely:

    
    
      winter = dec,jan,feb
      spring = mar,apr,may
      summer = jun,jul,aug
      autumn = sep,okt,nov
    

Except, winter isn't really happening so far this year

~~~
dingaling
The etymology of 'winter', as best can be determined, is 'rainy season'. So
depending upon your local climate you might like to slide those three-month
windows around a bit.

In my part of the UK November is _definitely_ part of winter on that basis,
which is why I like the Soltice-as-midpoint-of-season approach.

------
MAGZine
Despite the fact that the author acknowledges that the solstice begins on
different days, he has overlooked the fact winter the solstice for 2015 is
TODAY (22nd), not the 21st.

So, the title is correct. ;-)

On a non-pedantic note, I agree that the seasons break emotionally well before
their astronomical date. Winter beings with snowfall in November, Summer
begins with the warm weather and long days in June (unless if you're living in
Vancouver, in which case its still raining). And as widely as people seem to
agree on this, at least in Canada, its easy to get corrected if it is "not
actually [season]," yet.

~~~
famous
Pedantic follow-up to pedantic note: The solstice was at 04:48 UTC on Tuesday,
which is Monday night in the Americas [23:48 in ET, 20:48 PT, etc]. Everyone's
right!

------
titanix2
> "Japan’s traditional calendar also specifies a winter beginning in early
> November and ending in early February."

Actually like a lot of cultural things in Japan, this came from China.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term)

