Northern sunset times during summer/winter
 

Can someone tell me how this works.

Ok, I know during the summer, the farther north you are, the later the sunset. I remember once in Canada, it stayed lighted till around 10:00pm, compared to here in Hawaii when it may set around 7:30pm in the summer.

I never thought of this, but I always figured that during the winter, though days are shorter all over the place, the northern areas would still have overall longer days than here, but I notice in Oregon, the sun sets around 4:50. Here in Hawaii, it doesn't set till after 6:00pm.

Any meterologists out there?

As the sun moves northward in the summer, the days are longer the further north you go (24 hour sunlight near the north pole), but in the winter as the sun moves southward, the days are shorter in the north and there is 24 hour light at the south pole -- 24 hour darkness at the north pole.

NeoPatrick is on the mark. If it helps to visual this, think of the area between the equator and the North Pole. In summer, the equator has fewer hours of day light and the arctic circle has the longest number of day light hours (land of the midnight sun/the sun is moving further north). HI is closer to the equator than Oregon, so HI has a shorter number of day light hours in summer. In winter this reverses.

And of course on the vernal and autumnal equinox there are 12hrs of daylight and 12hrs of darkness all points north, south, east and west.

At the solstice (1st day of summer/winter) the differences can be substantial even in the continental US. The shortest days are 1hr shorter in Chicago than they are in Texas, for example. Exactly the opposite in June, of course.

Actually the sun doesn't move it stays put. The earth tilts on it's axis as it revolves around the sun.

So take a golf ball, or your fist. During the summer (from a northern hemisphere prospective), the northern half of the earth tilts toward the sun, and the southern half tilts away from the sun. The opposite in winter. So you can see by the angles the differences in sun exposure.

Hawaii is closer to the equator, so less angles.

At the equator, there's no appreciable difference in daylight between June and December solstices--it is always March or September (equinox) there. In Quito, Ecuador, for example, sunrise is within a few minutes of 6:10 am and sunset around 6:20 pm every day of the year. (http://www.timeanddate.com/ has everything you might want to know about time, daylight, etc for the whole planet.)

Hawaii is closer to the equator than any other state, so the June-December difference is smallest there; greatest in Alaska, of course.

Not only do the daylengths differ, the location of sunrise and sunset change.

In Alaska the sun does not rise in the east and set in the west. In summer, it rises and sets in the north (not due north, but a few degrees on either side). In the south, it rises and sets in the south, again, a few degrees oneither side of due south.

It is very confusing to tourists.

Also - it depends on what part of the time zone you're in.

For instance, I had a client in Cincy - the western part of the eastern time zone- and it stayed lighter there later than it did in NYC - the more eastern part of the time zone.

So - for real times you actually need to look city by city - not just the entire time zone.

Everywhere on Earth gets the same number of daylight hours annually; they're just distributed unevenly. In the arctic, the "midnight sun" in summer evens out the lack of any daylight in winter. At the equator, virtually every day gets 12 hours of daylight.

Here's another website to search:

http://www.sunrisesunset.com/

As the others have explained in several different ways - in the far north, summer days are VERY long and winter days are VERY short.

Far enough north and the sun does not set in late June (24 hours of daylight), and it does not rise in late December (24 hours of darkness).