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The winter solstice is the minimum in heating, but the minimum in temperature lags because of thermal capacitance of the atmosphere-ocean-land system.

Climatologists usually consider (northern) winter to be December-January-February, which is three weeks ahead of the astronomical definition. That puts the middle of winter in the second week of January, which is pretty close to the time of the historically observed temperature minimum, at least in locations far from an ocean.

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15y ago

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