Читать книгу Weather For Dummies - John D. Cox - Страница 60

You want to know what’s really behind all that turbulent mess you think of as weather? (No, my people at the Go Figure Academy of Sciences have looked into it, and they tell me it’s not the government.) Do you want the Big Picture? Well, now it can be told. Believe it or not: It all has to do with the way the solar system is put together. (Hey, you wanted the Big Picture!)

When you really get down to it, three large facts of life in this particular reach of the solar system are responsible for the behavior of Earth’s atmosphere. You can see them all in Figure 3-5. It has to do with the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. It has to do with the way the planet rotates on its own axis, the way it spins like a top. And it has to do with the fact that it is not spinning straight up and down, but at a tilt. Also, notice how the Earth is closest to the Sun on January 3, in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere’s winter. Go figure!

FIGURE 3-5: The Big Three behind the weather on Earth: its yearlong orbit around the Sun, its tilt that gives the year its seasons, and its daily rotation.