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Seasons |
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“But oooh - those summer nights!” as the song from the musical “Grease"
goes. But those summer nights are best appreciated if you live in a climate
with different seasons. These photographs were taken in all four seasons on
the outskirts of Zug, a town in Switzerland. From flower-carpeted meadows in
spring to the warm shades of late summer, autumn’s frosty fingers and
winter-white wonders. As Louis Armstrong sang, “What a wonderful world!” But what causes these seasonal changes? They result from the earth’s annual orbit around the sun and the tilt of the earth's axis. The seasons are not the effect of a variation in distance between the sun and the earth, as some people believe. It is actually the tilt of the earth that causes the summer sun to be higher in the sky. The northern hemisphere faces the sun in June July and August and is thus exposed to more direct sunlight. The same applies to the southern hemisphere in December, January and February. In other words, the seasonal cycle of the polar and temperate zones of the northern hemisphere is opposite to that of the southern hemisphere. Tropical and subtropical zones have little change in the amount of sunlight and here the seasons are marked far more by rainy and dry periods. Some parts of the world face other climate extremes. One example is the Caribbean, where the talk is of a hurricane season. |
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