Quote:
Originally Posted by Topspinmo
Ok, who can connect the dots to GW? I sure it’s the cause…  [ |
At first I thought you meant George Washington!
But I realized since political references aren’t allowed you were referring to global warming.
It isn’t global warming. The variation is caused by the Gregorian calendar.
The calendar divides one year into 365 days. However, Earth's actual full orbital time around the sun is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds — which we account for by adding a leap year every four years to round the calendar up. But this creates its own problem: four times 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds is 23 hours and 15 minutes, meaning it's 45 minutes short of a full day.
To account for this drift, the calendar is "reset" by skipping a leap day every four centuries, with the next reset due in 2100. But until then, during leap years like this year, the solstice will occur 18 hours earlier than the previous year and 45 minutes earlier than the previous leap year.
So every successive leap year from now until the end of the millennium will be the earliest since 1796 by 45 minutes.
PS. There are some really smart people out there. I read an article about the transit of Venus in 1769. The British sent captain cook to Tahiti to take measurements!!
Fortunately it was a sunny day!
1769 transit of Venus observed from Tahiti - Wikipedia