As we head into the latter days of July, daylights starting to become noticeably shorter, at least if you’re a night owl or a very early riser, but it will become more obvious as we move into August. We’re now losing six to eight minutes a day of sunshine, depending where you’re at in the Bering Strait region.
From the climate perspective, what really matters is not so much the amount of daylight but rather the amount of solar heating, and that is determined by how high the sun is above the horizon, and for how long the higher the sun is in the sky, the greater the solar heating.
Because the earth is a sphere, the sun is always lower in the sky and mid day at our latitudes than places farther south. Within a few weeks of summer solstice, the much longer days here compared to farther south mostly make up for the lower solar elevation. We receive about the same amount of heating as places in the lower 48.
But the rest of the year we receive much less heating from the sun than down south, culminating around winter solstice when we effectively get no direct heat from the sun.
