WEEKLY WATER NEWS

19-23 June 2006


Water in the Earth System will return for Fall 2006 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 28 August 2006. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.


HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE! The summer solstice will occur on the morning of Wednesday, 21 June 2006 (officially, 1226 Z, or 8:26 AM EDT, 7:26 AM CDT, etc.) as the earth's spin axis is oriented such that the sun appears to be the farthest north in the local sky of most earth-bound observers. While most of us consider this event to be the start of astronomical summer, the British call the day the "Midsummer Day", as the apparent sun will begin its southward descent again. For essentially all locations in the northern hemisphere, daylight today will be the longest and the night will be the shortest of the year. Starting Thursday, the length of darkness will begin to increase as we head toward the winter solstice on 22 December 2006 at 0022 Z. However, because the sun is not as perfect a time-keeper as a clock, the latest sunsets of the year at many mid-latitude locations will continue through about the first week of July -- a consequence of the earth being near aphelion (on 3 July 2006) and the apparent sun moving across the sky well to the north of the celestial equator.

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Prepared by AMS WES Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
©Copyright, 2006, The American Meteorological Society.