Happy Aphelion! The summer in the Northern Hemisphere is NOT warmer because we are closer to the sun. In fact, today marks the point in Earth’s orbit when we’re furthest from the sun. The exact time is 12:46 pm EDT when the Earth will be 94,507,803 miles from the Sun. We’ll be 3.1 million miles closer at perihelion on January 3, 2019, at 12:19 am EDT. The image shows how much difference there is in the apparent size of the sun’s disk between those two dates. Warm summer temperatures are due to the tilt of the earth, which allows the sun’s rays to hit more directly in NH summer than in our winter, providing both stronger incoming radiation and more hours of sunlight to heat us up.
