Seasonal lag: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Seasonal lag is the phenomenon whereby the date of maximum average air temperature at a geographical location on a planet is delayed until some time after the date of maximum insolation.

On Earth, the seasonal lag is slightly more than a month on average and causes summer to be hotter than spring and winter to be colder than autumn despite the equivalent noontime altitudes of the Sun. Earth's seasonal lag is largely caused by the presence of large amounts of water, which has a high latent heat of freezing and of condensation.

Other planets have different seasonal lags. Neptune, for instance, has a year that lasts 165 Earth years and a seasonal lag of about 30 Earth years.[1] The gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, as well as Saturn's moon Titan all have substantial seasonal lags corresponding to the equivalent of between two to three months in Earth terms. Mars and Venus on the other hand have negligible seasonal lag of no more than a few days, and the same would be expected of Mercury since it has no atmosphere.