VOLCANO MADNESS: [Geology2] Why is the sun's appearance two days early in the Arctic?

Thursday, January 13, 2011

[Geology2] Why is the sun's appearance two days early in the Arctic?

[This article translated by Google.]

   
 Beyond the Arctic Circle, can find the time needed for day and night  depending on latitude up to half a year, the sunrise something very  special - even more so when the always joyfully anticipated event is  just around two days early is taking place. According to the KNR Radio  Greenland, the sun was in West Greenland Ilulissat on Tuesday (11.1.) at  exactly 12:56:57 Clock. Normally the sun goes there until 13 January  for the first time after the polar night again. Inhabitants of the  third-largest city with 4,500 inhabitants of Greenland, made because of  the early sun appeared worried. "Here in the place the sun comes up  until 13 January. There will not be the right one or the other," quoted  the Greenlandic radio KNR Holger Sivertsen, a 74-year-old local, in a  report on his website. Scientists rule out that the observation could  have geophysical or astronomical reasons. "In the constellation of the  stars has not changed, "said Wolfgang Lenhardt, head of the geophysics  department at the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics  (ZAMG) on the high tower. "Since even an outcry would have gone around  the world." The data of Earth's axis and Earth's rotation in question  were constantly and meticulously monitored. Thomas Posch from the  Institute for Astronomy at the University of Vienna completed  astronomical reasons for the premature end of the polar night also made.  He suggests that the observation is due to a change in the local  horizon. An accelerated by the melting of the Greenland ice  sheet-related lower horizon earlier than previously allowed a glimpse of  the sun appears, as "by far the most obvious"explanation. According to  Lenhardt it could possibly also to an atmospheric phenomenon - act - for  example by ice crystals caused a mirage.