The Aphelion occurs today at 0400 hours, UTC. (That’s 9 PM yesterday here in the Pacific Northwest.)
The aphelion is the point our orbit when we are farthest from the Sun. This occurs when the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing summer, which I always thought was a ripoff.
But this year, it makes me wonder how much worse the heat wave would be if this were reversed – if we reached aphelion in winter and perihelion (when we are closest to the sun) in summer .
Also, I wonder how much colder our winters would be if we did not experience perihelion in January.