why isn't the summer solstice in the middle of summer?

Question

If summer depends on sun light, the longest day of the year should be in the middle of the season and not in the beginning. How come?

Answer 1

Astronomically speaking you would be justified in calling the summer solstice the middle of summer. In fact, the Celtics have a festival held near the summer solstice called the Midsummer's Day festival, so they know that astronomically it is the middle of summer. But meteorological summer is based on average temperature and not the position of the sun. The Earth has a large heat capacity, which means it takes a long time to warm up and a long time to cool off. The result is the the weather doesn't get really hot until well after the peak solar heating has already come and gone. And the same for winter. The coldest weather doesn't come until quite some time after the date of minimum heating has been passed.

Answer 2

What you define as summer is somewhat conventional, but if you think of it as the warmest three months of the year then these clearly will not be before the solstice.

Here is a simple way to think about it (its not the full pciture). The sun warms the earth during the day, and it cools during the night. If there are more daylight hours than nightime hours, there will be more warming that cooling. There are more daylight hours than nighttime hours from the spring equinox to the autumn equinox, so the earth is cooling more than heating between those dates. The solstice is bang in the middle, so it happens when the earth is still warming up more than cooling down. You would thus expect the warmest days to be from the solstice to the equinox.

Answer 3

The summer solstice is culturally thought of as the longest day of the year and occurs (in the Northern Hemisphere) on June 21st, occasionally on June 20th. If an exact time is given for the solstice, then it refers to the Earth's maximum tilt relative to its orbit around the sun.

"Summer" as a season, from June 21 to September 21, corresponds to our hottest months. It takes the soil and especially water bodies a long time to heat up. So our hottest days lag behind our longest days.

-David in Kenai, Alaska

Answer 4

you have an inaccurate view of summer

who said summer depended on sunlight?

the solstice marks the begining, it is the longest day of the year with the most sunlight, and this is a fitting time to mark a season change

Answer 5

There's a website called something like badscience.com or whatnot that explains why it is so.
It's just a convention of our calendar. In some places, the summer solstice is indeed in the middle of summer and the equinoxes are in the middle of spring and fall.

Answer 6

Perhaps because the calender has changed over several thousand years.

Answer 7

it all has to do on the rotion of the earth, and the sun. thats why its in a diffarent spot every year.