A Neat Way to Look at Time and the Weather
Since the weather has turned calm for the next few days, albeit with normal winter temperatures, let me make a few observations about time, weather, and the length of the day.
Perhaps you have seen one of the Geochron clocks. These clocks feature a large map of the world, and show the current time in each time zone, along with a visual display of exactly where it is day and where it is night. While I would love to own one, starting at about $1500, they are a bit too expensive for my taste.
Thursday’s New York Times Circuits Section mentioned a website that works like the Geochron, but adds cloud cover information to the map. The World Sunlight Map shows the effects of the seasons fairly well. This time of year, the area of daylight looks like a bell curve, widening out in the Southern hemisphere to reflect the longer daylight in their summer. in July, the curve will look more like a widened U, with longer daylight in the Northern hemisphere.
Although we had the longest night back on December 20th, the sun hasn’t started rising earlier in the morning until today. The gain in daylight we’ve seen has been from the later sunsets in the evening. Earlier sunrises will accelerate the daily increase in the length of the day (currently just over one minute per day), and move us ever closer to Spring and Summer.