Leap Years

[sarebare]

Think about it. . . . . . . every 4 years over a very long period of time. . . . . . . we get an extra day a year. So, would that then affect our seasons, over time ( a long long time) and consqueently be the cause of us having later summers/winters etc.???

[Loosehead]

no, we have the leap years to prevent season creep. a leap year is every year that is divisible by 4 except when the ear is divisble by 100 unless it is divisble by 400. this coupled with the occasional "leap second" mean that the seasons do not move, the equinoxes and solstics are constant.

[Loosehead]

interestingly the Islamic Calendar does have the problem you describe. This is because it is based on the moon so the Islamic year is 11 days shorter than the actual year, this means for example Ramadan is 11 days earlier each year. This is not really a problem in the middle east but can present starvation issues nearer to the arctic circle!

[dundurn]

Our current calendar, the Gregorian, was introduced to tidy up the residual errors in the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar was introduced to correct precisely the sort of season creep you are describing. By the time Julius Caesar introduced his reform Romans had endured years where the seasons didn't match the calendar and entire extra months had to be added in to bring things into synch. The Romans referred to these as years of confusion.