PERIHELION, APHELION & MILANKOVITCH CYCLE

 

The closest point to the Sun in a planet’s orbit is called perihelion. The furthest point is called aphelion. Notice how the planet moves fastest at perihelion and slowest at aphelion.
The words "aphelion" and "perihelion" come from the Greek language. In Greek, "helios" mean Sun, "peri" means near, and "apo" means away from.

More about perihelion & aphelion:
http://www.windows2universe.org/physical_science/physics/mechanics/orbit/perihelion_aphelion.html

What is Milankovitch Cycle?
A Milankovitch cycle is a cyclical movement related to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. There are three of them: eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession. According to the Milankovitch Theory, these three cycles combine to affect the amount of solar heat that’s incident on the Earth’s surface and subsequently influence climatic patterns.

Our orbit around the sun is not a circle, it is an ellipse with an eccentricity of about 0.0167.  This orbit both changes shape and rotates around the sun much like a spirogram tracing out a flower-like shape.
It is summer in the northern hemisphere, a time when people often say things like, “We are closer to the sun than we are in winter.”  This is not really true.  Summer is a product of the angle at which Earth is tilted, right now Earth is tilted so that the northern regions lean toward the sun.  In terms of orbit we are actually at the furthest point Earth gets from the sun.

This has interesting implications in terms of the global climate.  This means that right now winters tend to be warm (the planet is closer to the sun) and summers cool (the planet further from the sun).  In the big picture this places us in the midst of a global cool cycle, the type of situation that tends to lead to ice ages, like the one we are emerging from.

More about A Milankovitch cycles:
http://www.universetoday.com/39012/milankovitch-cycle/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_Evidence/
Animation via Wikipedia Commons. SOURCE CORINA MARINESCU