this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Ok this is an idiot question but how does the global average temperature change so much over the course of a year. Is the northern hemisphere warmer overall during its summer compared to the southern hemisphere in its summer?
I don't know the answer and was wondering the same thing, but the southern hemisphere has a lot more ocean, which I'm guessing is the difference.
This is correct. Water has an extremely high heat capacity, meaning that it takes a lot of energy to warm or cool it by any noticable amount. Land does not. So while the different amount of sunlight in summer/winter changes the land temperature by a large amount, the ocean barely changes. Most of the land on Earth is in the northern hemisphere and therefore we get those temperature swings.