Why does winter have shorter days

For example, Glasgow, Scotland will experience approximately seven hours of daylight; Fairbanks, Alaska will only experience a meager four hours of daylight, as the sun will barely peek over the southern horizon there.

There are even places that will see no sunrise at all, like Barrow, Alaska. For the polar regions, the solstice will leave them in darkness for more than 24 hours. Why does this happen? The Earth is tilted; it does not face the sun upright, instead our planet lies at a This is one of the reasons why the seasons on Earth seem to be reversed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

When the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, residents of areas on that part of the planet have summer while residents below the equator are experiencing winter.

While on December 21 the U. Central time. It marks the shortest day and the longest night. It takes the earth days, a year to rotate around the sun. Earth is tiled When it is tilted away it is winter. The long nights and short days prevent the Earth from warming up. This is why we have winter. The light is more concentrated and does not spread out as much, thus increasing the amount of energy hitting any given spot. The long daylight hours allow the Earth plenty of time to reach warm temperatures.

The solstice can occur anywhere between Dec. The winter solstice marks the minute the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. This results in the longest day of the year , also known as the summer solstice, for all locations in the Northern Hemisphere, and the shortest day in the Southern Hemisphere, called the winter solstice. Halfway between the solstices are the equinoxes.

This marks the point in Earth's orbit where the planet's tilt switches its orientation either toward or away from the Sun. At one hemisphere's spring equinox, the tilt changes from away to toward the Sun, lengthening the subsequent days until the fall equinox, when the opposite occurs. The solstices and equinoxes have variable dates due to small accounting differences in the Earth's orbit a year is slightly more than days and calendar systems.

However, the first day of a season as usually defined on a calendar falls near the same dates as these astronomical events.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs around December 22; summer solstice, June 22; spring equinox, March 21; and fall equinox, September Amy Dusto is a high school science teacher and a freelance writer. Equinox means "equal. Both are 12 hours long. Check out the chart below to see how the solstice works. These activities, crafts, and book lists will keep students reading, exploring, and learning over the summer months. Create a List. List Name Save. Rename this List. Rename this list.

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