109
votes
Accepted
Planet wide seasons: Possible?
In theory, the answer is actually yes. However, unlike our own planet, whose seasons are created through tilt, the planet in question would have to have an elliptical orbit that brought it closer to ...
- 1,116
58
votes
Planet wide seasons: Possible?
An even simpler explanation is simply for there to be no land in one hemisphere of the planet. If it’s summer in the southern hemisphere, then no one will care that it’s winter in the northern ...
- 20.2k
54
votes
Accepted
My planet has a long period orbit. How can I make the seasons change faster in order to shorten the length of a calendar year on it?
He was an old man of 90 harvests
The seasons on this planet are mild, so ancient people wouldn't care much about how often they went around their suns. Instead, they'd care about when to plant crops ...
- 4,176
41
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Is it possible for a planet to have the same seasons in both hemispheres?
Yes it is possible, if the planet has little axial tilt but an eccentric orbit. Then summer will be when it is closest to its sun, and winter will be when it is furthest away, which will be the same ...
- 20.2k
33
votes
Can a planet have asymmetrical weather seasons? Like 3 months for summer, fall and spring each and 6 months of winter?
Yes, asymmetrical seasons happen right here on Earth, when humans want them to.
The reason we have four seasons of equal length isn't because climate actually behaves that way. It's because humans ...
30
votes
Accepted
A Planet Where The Four Seasons Occur Multiple Times In One Year?
The reason we have four seasons is directly related to our planet's axial tilt... the rotational axis of the Earth is currently [1] inclined at 23.5° from the "vertical" relative to our orbital plane: ...
- 5,743
27
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Accepted
Is it possible to have a habitable planet unsuitable for agriculture?
Get rid of the "gathers" part of "hunter-gather" and make the people to be carnivorous; At least like wolves are, if not obligate carnivores. That would greatly increase the gap between where ...
- 2,809
23
votes
Accepted
Can a planet have asymmetrical weather seasons? Like 3 months for summer, fall and spring each and 6 months of winter?
L Dutch's Answer does a really good job of explaining how Kepler's law of planetary motion works, but it is missing some pretty important details about axial tilt.
While the eccentricity of your orbit ...
- 87.8k
22
votes
Accepted
Do seasons occur on a tidally-locked planet?
Yes, if the orbit isn't circular.
Seasons can definitely occur on a tidally locked planet.
Just like normal planets, tidally-locked planets don't need to have perfectly circular orbits. This means ...
- 99.8k
22
votes
Can a planet have asymmetrical weather seasons? Like 3 months for summer, fall and spring each and 6 months of winter?
If your planet has a highly eccentric orbit, the time it will spend far away from the star will be necessarily longer than the time it spends closer to the star. Being further away it will also ...
- 277k
20
votes
Planet wide seasons: Possible?
An alternate explanation would be a binary star system. While the two stars orbit eachother, they get closer and further away from the planet, producing more and less heat.
This allows for seasons of ...
- 466
20
votes
My planet has a long period orbit. How can I make the seasons change faster in order to shorten the length of a calendar year on it?
One star blocks the heat from the other.
If both stars and your planet are all collinear then your planet is getting hit with one stars worth of heat, the other star is occluded by the closer star. ...
- 44.1k
20
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Having a long winter every four years - regularly
Maybe the star has a four-year cycle just like our Sun has an eleven-year cycle?
The energy output of our Sun varies by about 0.1% during the cycle, which results in about 0.2 °C or 0.3 °F variation ...
- 86k
19
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How to have a landmass the size of Great Britain have almost every single climate
Altitude.
The big island of Hawaii has just about every climate type. Discussed here:
Could an island on Earth with these climate types exist?
It is a combination of the giant central mountain ...
- 304k
18
votes
Is it possible to have a habitable planet unsuitable for agriculture?
Imagine a planet with two life layers:
...
- 1,393
17
votes
A Planet Where The Four Seasons Occur Multiple Times In One Year?
The planet has no axial tilt.
But it anyway has seasons, because:
The star it orbits arount is an intrinsic variable star, it changes its size and brightness periodically, causing seasons that may ...
- 1,251
17
votes
Habitable Planet with Highly Eliptical Orbit
I think that because of how orbital mechanis work, a planet with an aphelion inside the habitable zone and a perihelion too close to the sun would be better for life. A planet spends a lot more time ...
- 17k
17
votes
Having a long winter every four years - regularly
I will need a 'scientific' explanation as to why this happens
This is the Fandom Effect.
Ignore it with all your strength, and write your story, just like George Lucas in Star Wars, the ST:TOS ...
- 17.6k
16
votes
What would make a planet have 8 discernable seasons?
The four seasons are a convention which works best at temperate latitudes in Europe and the Americas. Our ancestors could have as easily agreed on six or eight. In many temperate and temperate-...
- 86k
16
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Can a planet have asymmetrical weather seasons? Like 3 months for summer, fall and spring each and 6 months of winter?
It happens right here on Earth. The temperate "four equal seasons" climate is actually an outlier:
The equatorial tropics, particularly in the coastal areas, have a zero-season climate: ...
- 17.3k
15
votes
What natural phenomenon could lead to greatly varying season lengths?
The year is related to the motion of the planet around its star. When the star are back to a certain position, one says 1 year has passed.
To account for season length which are in the range you ask, ...
- 277k
15
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Is it possible for a planet to have the same seasons in both hemispheres?
Of course. Just make sure the axial tilt is zero. Basically, 99% of our weather changes are due to the angle of solar incidence, and only a small amount is due to the distance Earth is from the Sun ...
- 1,849
14
votes
Accepted
Seasons on Infinite Cylinder Planet
To avoid too much confusion I am going to state some of my assumptions. I had to edit my answer slightly, to take into account some factors I had realised over the few hours since I posted my original ...
- 12.9k
13
votes
Accepted
A fictional island on Earth with "longer" springs and autumns
The ocean itself tends to moderate climate -- Vancouver, BC, gets much less severe winters than Toronto, despite being somewhat further from the equator. Further, the temperature of the water has a ...
- 45.6k
13
votes
Accepted
Habitable Planet with Highly Eliptical Orbit
On such a planet life would probably evolve in different ways than on our planet, and complex life could be different from what we consider as "plants" and "animals". There would be a huge ...
- 11.2k
12
votes
Accepted
Season cycle that would occur on a habitable planet that orbits two suns?
I'm going to attack this with math. First off, I am not going to make any assumptions about what orbits might be stable. That is something we can check with an orbit simulator like rebound, as I did ...
- 85.1k
12
votes
Planet wide seasons: Possible?
First it needs to be noted, that for the entire planet to have same season it needs to have its rotational axis be perpendicular to its orbital plane.
As for how it can have changing seasons there're ...
- 237
12
votes
A Planet Where The Four Seasons Occur Multiple Times In One Year?
Your seasons aren’t caused by axial tilt. They’re more accurately known as ‘weather’.
There is a system on Earth that leads to warm, humid seasonality and raised sea levels on top of the usual four ...
- 66.2k
12
votes
Is it possible for a planet to have the same seasons in both hemispheres?
Yes
Expanding on the other answers here, let's start with an overview of why there are seasons. I really like this description:
We have seasons because the earth is tilted (wonky) as it makes its
...
- 10.5k
11
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Is it possible to have a habitable planet unsuitable for agriculture?
A meta answer for any question of the form "How can I have a planet where civilization doesn't look like ours?" is "Read Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel and figure out what links to cut to ...
- 2,535
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible