Every year in early January, Earth reaches the closest point in its orbit to the Sun, a moment astronomers call perihelion. We are slightly nearer to our star and receiving more solar energy than we do in July, yet large parts of the northern hemisphere are locked in winter cold rather than “roasting alive.” The reason is that distance is only a minor player in our seasons compared with the geometry of sunlight and the way our planet is tilted.
Understanding why the coldest weeks often arrive when we are nearest the Sun is more than a trivia nugget. It reveals how the orbit, the axial tilt and even the distribution of oceans and land work together to shape climate, and why simplistic claims that “closer means hotter” misread how the Earth–Sun system actually behaves.
Perihelion: closest to the Sun, but not the hottest
Earth’s path around the Sun is not a perfect circle. It is a slightly stretched ellipse, “like a circle someone sat” on, so the planet spends part of the year a bit closer to the star and part a bit farther away, as explained for Earth. The closest point, perihelion, arrives in the opening days of January each year, with the exact date shifting slightly because the calendar does not perfectly track the orbit. In 2026, Earth reached this point on Jan. 3 at 12:15 p.m. EST (1715 GMT), passing within roughly 147,093,000 kilometers of the Sun, a figure highlighted in a 147,093,000 kilometer estimate. Another detailed breakdown of the event notes that, in 2026, When Is It occurred at about 17:15 UTC (12:15 p.m. EST), underscoring how precisely astronomers can time this closest solar encounter.
Being nearer to the Sun does change the amount of energy Earth receives. Because of the inverse square law, the planet gets roughly 7% more sunlight at perihelion than it does at aphelion, the farthest point in early July, a difference quantified in a Jul explainer and echoed in a separate analysis that notes we receive “roughly 7% more sunlight at perihelion compared to aphelion” Jan. Observers who measure the apparent size of the solar disk find that the Sun appears about “3.4%” larger in the winter sky, a subtle but measurable effect. Yet climate specialists emphasize that this extra energy is spread over the whole globe and is modest compared with other drivers of temperature, so its impact on day to day weather is small.
Why seasons ignore our distance from the Sun
The key to the seasonal puzzle is that Earth is tilted. The planet’s spin axis leans about 23.5 degrees relative to its orbit, so over the year different hemispheres tip toward or away from the Sun. Educational resources on How Does the explain that this axial tilt is “one of the” most important factors in understanding the seasons, because it changes both the angle of sunlight and the length of the day. A separate breakdown of What Causes Seasons notes that as the planet spins, the hemisphere tilted toward the Sun receives more direct rays and longer daylight, which warms the surface, while the opposite hemisphere gets lower Sun angles and shorter days, which cool it. That is why, when the northern hemisphere is in deep winter, the southern hemisphere is in the middle of summer, regardless of how close we are to the Sun.
Meteorologists stress that “the seasons have nothing to do with how far the Earth is from the Sun,” pointing out that if distance were the main factor, it would be hottest in the northern hemisphere in January rather than July Earth. A similar explanation from another primer on Tilt and Orbit underlines that the elliptical shape of the orbit has “little effect” on the seasons compared with tilt. Visual guides that walk through how the Sun’s position shifts over the year show that when the northern hemisphere leans away, the midday Sun sits lower in the sky, its rays spread over a larger area and pass through more atmosphere, so the same energy is diluted, a point illustrated with the Sun drawn on the right side of Figure 1 and the note that “Now the Sun is on the right side of Earth in Figure 1. You can imagine that the Sun is now directly above a region in the northern hemisphere.”
Why “closest to the Sun” still feels like winter
Once you factor in tilt, the timing of perihelion starts to make intuitive sense. Each year, in the opening days of January, Each orbit brings Earth to a precise point where it is closest to the Sun, and then, months later in early July, to the farthest point. A detailed overview of Earth at perihelion notes that this closest approach always happens during northern winter and southern summer, because the tilt, not the distance, sets the seasons. Public outreach posts drive home the counterintuitive fact that we are actually “CLOSEST to the sun during winter,” with one explainer joking that it “feels like it should be the opposite, right? But here’s” why the geometry wins out Did. Another social media breakdown of the same point repeats that we are CLOSEST in winter “But” still cold, underscoring how persistent the misconception is.
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