Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year Saturday at the ancient Stonehenge monument. Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke. There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June. Starting Sunday, days will get a little bit longer in the Northern Hemisphere every single day until late June. These annual ch...
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The broiling summer of 2023 was the hottest in the Northern Hemisphere in more than 2,000 years, a new study found. When the temperatures spiked last year, numerous weather agencies said it was the hottest month, summer and year on record. But those records only go back to 1850 at best because it’s based on thermometers. Now scientists can go back to the modern western calendar’s year 1, when the Bible says Jesus of Nazareth walked the Earth, but have found no hotter northern summer than last year’s. A study Tuesday in the journal Nature uses a well-established method and record of more than 10,000 tree rings to calculate summertime temperatures for each year since the year 1. No year came even close to last summer’s high heat, said lead author Jan Esper, a climate geographer at the...
Read MoreSpring is almost here — officially, at least. The vernal equinox arrived on Tuesday, marking the start of the spring season for the Northern Hemisphere. But what does that actually mean? Here’s what to know about how we split up the year using the Earth’s orbit. What is the equinox? As the Earth travels around the sun, it does so at an angle. For most of the year, the Earth’s axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun. That means the sun’s warmth and light fall unequally on the northern and southern halves of the planet. During the equinox, the Earth’s axis and its orbit line up so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight. The word equinox comes from two Latin words meaning equal and night. That’s because on the equinox, day and night last almost t...
Read MoreThe equinox arrived on Saturday, marking the start of the fall season for the Northern Hemisphere. But what does that actually mean? Here’s what to know about how we split up the year using the Earth’s orbit. What is the equinox? As the Earth travels around the sun, it does so at an angle. For most of the year, the Earth’s axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun. That means the sun’s warmth and light fall unequally on the northern and southern halves of the planet. During the equinox, the Earth’s axis and its orbit line up so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight. The word equinox comes from two Latin words meaning equal and night. That’s because on the equinox, day and night last almost the same amount of time — though one may get a few ext...
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