It is my (barely informed) understanding that summer is caused primarily by the larger amount of sunlight hitting that hemisphere during the season. So why is it that (in the northern hemisphere) July and August are so often hotter than June (I know it’s not always the case but usually).
Also why wouldn’t May, getting just as much direct sunlight per day as July, be as hot on average as July? Why is August even hot when the end of the month is getting close to the equinox?
In: 3
Think of the each hemisphere as a large sink, with the temperature represented by water in the sink. The sink is constantly filling from the tap, as the Sun keeps throwing energy at us, summer or winter, but it fills up faster – aka the tap is putting water in more quickly – in the the summer months.
But the sink is constantly draining – this represents the heat lost by things like heat loss to space, or the other hemisphere, or any other sources. This loss is not constant, but it doesn’t vary THAT much compared to how much the tap varies.
If water drains out of the sink faster than it fills, it gets colder. If water fills the sink faster than it drains, it gets warmer. And this is why June isn’t the warmest month. The tap might be the most open in June, but it’s still filling faster than its draining until August or so.
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