I mean, everyone knows that in January it’s hot in Australia, and in July it’s cold there.
But do Australians call it “winter” in January and “summer” in July? Or does just “winter” imply hot weather and beaches, and “summer” implies winter, eh, i mean, snow sports and wool socks.
And given that, most of the population lives in northern hemisphere, is there a body of dad jokes and culture tropes related to the fact that “we’re different”, or is it just too cringe and boring. (I realize both could be true on this one.)
No, summer and winter are reversed in the southern hemisphere.
But more than that, the seasons aren’t even consistent within each hemisphere—the exact beginning and ending dates of each season vary from region to region depending on the local climate.
Yeah if you think about it the idea of 4 seasons permeating culture has more to do with European colonization than anything scientific.
The concept of 4 seasons itself is very Eurocentric, and leads to the inaccurate belief that the seasons/climate are messy and unpredictable in Australia.
The native aboriginal peoples have their own season system for each region, which much more accurately describes the weather. For example, the aboriginal calendar identifies 7* seasons in Victoria.
*Edit for previously incorrect info which stated there were 6 seasons (different area of Australia)
That’s actually really interesting, I had no idea. Do you have a link with the page to that image? It got jpeg’d and I’d like to read more.
Edit: thanks for the links all, really appreciate it.
As an example, where I live near the equator we have seasons that are only a few weeks long. We alternate between “summer” and “winter”. The quotes are because the only real difference in our seasons is how much rain falls since neither the temperature nor the amount of daylight changes much. Winter seasons are cloudy and wet and summer seasons are sunny and dry.