The Winter Solstice, the moment when the Earth’s axial tilt is fully 23º26′ from the Sun, is tomorrow, Friday, December 21st, at 4:12 AM MT in the northern hemisphere. It is, of course, the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Earth’s orbit is elliptical not circular. The earliest sunset (in the northern hemisphere) was around two weeks ago. The latest sunrise is in about two weeks.

But Friday is the shortest time between the two, the shortest daylight of the year in the northern hemisphere.

For more than 1600 years in western Europe the northern winter solstice was celebrated on December 25th, though astronomically it increasingly came later than that due to errors in the Julian calendar.

pourmecoffee says this is the video clip of the year. No dispute here.

Here’s the background.

To get a glimpse of the future, look to East Africa today.

The Horn of Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in 60 years: Crop failures have left up to 10 million at risk of famine; social order has broken down in Somalia, with thousands of refugees streaming into Kenya; British Aid alone is feeding 2.4 million people across the region.

That’s a taste of what’s to come, say scientists mapping the impact of a warming planet on agriculture and civilization.

Scientific American

So a climate skeptic, a physicist at Cal Berkeley, thought the data was wrong and he could do better. He even got the Koch brothers to fund the work.

Guess what?

Global warming is real, according to a major study released today [October 20, 2011]. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study fines finds reliable evidence of a arise rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1ºC since the mid-1950s.

Analyzing temperature data from 15 sources, in some cases going as far back as 1800, the Berkeley Earth study directly addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics, including the the urban hear heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias.

On the basis of its analysis, according to Berkeley Earth’s founder and scientific director, Professor Richard A. Muller, the group concluded that earlier studies based on more limited data by teams in the United States and Britain had accurately estimated the extent of land surface warming.

Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature

Four sweet little paragraphs about fall.

Thanks to Rich for the pointer.