The Last Night

If you ask most people how far north the United Kingdom is you will get a myriad of responses most of which will be wrong. Even for those of us who actually live here there is a surprising misconception that lies in part thanks to the difficulty of representing the Earth, a 3 Dimensional object on a map which is a 2 Dimensional object. The problem is that loss of the third dimension necessitates the loss of accuracy, some information has to be lost in the process of flattening the globe. There's an interesting video on YouTube by Map Men - Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones that discusses this concept in detail and the implication it has on the accuracy of the maps we use every day.

The United Kingdom lies between 50°N and 60°N which means that the UK's Southernmost point is roughly on the same latitude as Winnipeg in Canada, and the Northernmost point is roughly in line with Anchorage in Alaska - although Alaska itself also succumbs to this flattening problem with many Americans unaware of just how far North it actually lies. This location for the UK is at odds with the perceptions that many have that we are much closer to the latitude of countries in Continental Europe like Spain and Italy, or States like New York and New Hampshire in the US perhaps because of the cultural associations - the former being continental Europe which despite being comprised of almost 50 countries is sometimes treated as one internationally, or in the latter case those states forming part of New England and the historical connections that moniker pertains to.

As for the reality of how far North the UK actually lies, that has some implications that fascinate me personally. Notably, an annual phenomena that maybe some in the UK are only vaguely aware of - the absence of Nightfall. It's the 9th of May at the time of writing, tonight will be the last nightfall in Northern Ireland until August, from dawn tomorrow we will only experience daylight and twilight. This lasts for 3 months because of how far North in the UK we are, but we're not alone in experiencing this phenomena. The Southernmost point of the UK experiences 2 months without Nightfall, and the Northernmost point experiences almost 3 and a half in total. No matter where you are in the UK there's at least 2 whole months without Nightfall.

Click to enlarge

As a kid, I knew this happened in other countries nearby, our Nordic Neighbours in particular, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, all of which lie in part within the Arctic Circle. This phenomena wasn't something I thought happened in the UK until I was much older when studying Geography at GCSE and paying attention to maps in greater detail. Having only daylight and twilight, with an absence of pitch black skies at night is odd when you stop and think about it. Hearing birds singing at 2 in the morning isn't uncommon in the Summer months where I live, despite the fact I live in a city, it really has no business calling itself that, the question of what constitutes a city in itself is almost entirely arbitrary.

Nevertheless one of the major impacts in terms of climate that this phenomena causes is the fact that in the absence of Nightfall we never cool completely, so when temperatures start to rise they have a tendency to build until a cold front causes us to cool. I always dread the summer, a hangover from my childhood, as an albino every year when the weather would turn without fail I'd be sick for a week or two whilst I adapted. The days I spent flaked out aren't fond memories. We are not a country that was designed for heat, most houses in the UK are build from blocks forming a cavity wall that usually gets pumped full of polystyrene beads, with a third outer wall commonly made of brick or stone cladding, the result is a house that ends up with the worst of both worlds - too warm in the summer and difficult to heat in the winter.

My primary school, high school, and college didn't have air conditioning, University was the first time I sat in an air conditioned classroom and even then the buildings were retrofitted, the University was made up of buildings that were constructed long before climate change was even a consideration in their design. My time in primary school and high school were exacerbated by the fact that we had to wear a uniform at all times that consisted of 3 layers of materials that did not breathe. In the warmer months I don't think there was a week that went by in high school where I didn't have to go to the nurse because I was ready to pass out.

In the two decades that have passed since leaving high school I've mostly escaped the extremity of the discomfort that summer brings but in recent years as records are broken consistently and the bar rises, it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep my cool, quite literally. The temptation for those who live in hotter climates is always there to say that we don't know "real" heat, even with average summer temperatures in the UK slowly creeping up in Celsius into the 30's [86 Fahrenheit and above] that reminder has to be asserted that our country was not built with those temperatures in mind, houses in Spain or countries like Brazil were built with the expectation that the environment itself would be warm and the priority is cooling the property - in fact from talking to people who live in those countries it's not uncommon for houses there to be built without heating entirely because it's just not needed.

We like to think that being human is a universal experience and that we all have the same issues just to varying extremes, but it's moments like this when I reflect on the idea of culture shock, the question of what is normal to you that you never think about which is actually bizarre to others when you have to explain it - for most people in the UK we don't give a second thought to Summer nights always being bright, and "dark nights" something we associate only with Winter, it takes a moment when you have to realise how to explain that to someone who has never experienced it.