Bad news for those who enjoy the long, lazy days of summer. We've now officially entered the darkest time of year.
While you've surely noticed the sky turning dark much sooner since the recent end of Daylight Saving Time, sunlight is set to become even more sparse as the Northern Hemisphere enters a time of year known as solar winter.
The waning daylight was made more noticeable by the recent time change, but the days have actually been getting shorter since the summer solstice on June 21. The summer solstice occurs when one of the Earth's poles, in this case the northern one, is titled closest to the sun, causing the longest day and shortest night of the calendar year.
After this, the days begin getting shorter until the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year, at which point things turn around and start moving once more in the opposite direction.
This year, the winter solstice is set to occur on Dec. 21. Until then, we can expect things to keep getting, well, darker. So how does the solar winter play into all of this?
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Solar winter is the quarter of the year with the least amount of daylight for the Northern Hemisphere, according to AccuWeather.com. While the dates are approximate and may change slightly from year to year, solar winter generally lasts from about Nov. 6 to Feb. 3.
Solar winter may be the darkest time of year, but that doesn't mean it's the coldest. Thanks to a phenomena called seasonal lag, it takes some time for Earth's land and water to catch up when temperatures begin to change between seasons. Warmer weather from the summer and fall carries over into the early phases of the winter, keeping temperatures higher.
Water has a higher heat capacity than land, meaning it takes more time and significant change in temperature for the waters that make up more than 70% of Earth's surface to cool down or warm up. The slowness of this process means that even if we are experiencing the darkest days of the year, we likely are not experiencing the coldest at the same time.
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Each year, there are three phases of winter between November and December. While we have dates to dictate the "official" duration of each season, meteorologists and climatologists have a different way of defining the season.
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