[summer '85]

Can anyone solve this Met Office puzzle?

At the bottom of the page  of the link shown below is this

"Spring is mid March to mid May, summer is mid May to mid September, autumn is mid September to mid November and winter is mid November to mid March."

http://www.metoffice.com/weather/europe/uk/guide.html

Now the Met Office defintion of the seasons are

Winter: Dec, Jan, Feb
Spring: Mar, etc........

 So why the discrepancy?

[PaulKn]

To help get the seasonal forecasts correct, by allowing some lee-way! ;)

[PK2]

The problem, of course, that months are just a man-made construct that has no relationship to the earth. I guess if you have to pick "whole months" for the seasons then you would have to pick Dec, Jan & Feb etc even though the winter season may extend slightly outside this but not for another 30ish days. :)

Having said that, I think that they need to stick to one diffention for this and also the average temperatures... or at least state which they are using each time.

[JohnF]

Wouldn't it be more sensible to use the postion of the Sun on the ecliptic plane as the defintion of the seasons?

After all it's this movement that causes them!

JohnF

[PK2]

That is most likely what older "primative" cultures did. Then we became "logical" and decided that we must divide the year into twelve roughly equal parts because [dunno] twelve is a "magic number" or something. As far as I can see there is no logic for the year starting when it does either. If we had started the year say 2 weeks later or earlier then we would have had four clear "whole months" of winter (if we go by the first met office suggestions above), whereas now we just have 3 whole months and two "halves". I guess it is too late to change now...

[snowflake]

The way I would mark the seasons would be by winter temps. If you say got the coldest 90 day range of temps in the year over the past 30 years and called that winter then the rest of the seasons would slot into place :D