Are seasons global?

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

Just a short question; do you think that the season on Planetos is the same everywhere? Obviously on earth the season in one hemisphere is the opposite of the other, but does it work that way in ASOIAF with their magical seasons?

 

I don't have anything to base it on but I always got the impression that the season is the same in the southern hemisphere (not that we have any chance of seeing it).

[Felguy]

Yes, it's global. At least I am 98% sure.

 

But it affects some areas more than others.

[khal drogon]

If it was anything like earth the southern hemisphere should have a winter while the north has summer.

[falcotron]

If it was anything like earth the southern hemisphere should have a winter while the north has summer.

And during the Long Night, on the opposite side of the world, they had a Long Day. The Other-Others marched down from the giant lava lake known as the Lands of Always Summer, bringing the heat with them. They raised an army of antiwights (living soldiers who just lie there not moving... not quite as useful as wights) and made war with the First Blokes and the Children of the Desert. But then came the First Hero, with a magic bucket of murky water named Darkbringer that he'd drawn first from steel, then from a tiger, and then from his husband Sirhan Sirhan, and he led the forces of darkness to defeat the Other-Others. Bruce the Builder then dug a giant trench, 300 miles across and 700 feet deep, to prevent them ever crossing again.

[Codename: Nymeria]

It's been mentioned in a variety of SSMs and interviews. 

 

To wit (it's from an interview I can't find a link to, but it's all over the internet): The most conspicuous aspect of the world of Westeros in A Song of Ice and Fire is the nature of the seasons, the long and random nature of the seasons. I have gotten a number of fan letters over the years from readers who are trying to figure out the reason for why the seasons are the way they are. They develop lengthy theories: perhaps it’s a multiple-star system, and what the axial tilt is, but I have to say, “Nice try, guys, but you’re thinking in the wrong direction.” This is a fantasy series. I am going to explain it all eventually, but it’s going to be a fantasy explanation. It’s not going to be a science-fiction explanation. (emphasis not mine). 

 

There's also this from SSM, which admittedly hasn't made sense to me after looking at it like five times (http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Asshai.com_Forum_Chat)

 

[Are the seasons irregular only in Westeros or also in the eastern continent?]

 

The eastern continent (Essos) is further south than Westeros, and feels the North of the great sweep of the eastern sweep of the eastern lands is a huge ocean, the Shivering Sea. Only Westeros extends to the far north.

[khal drogon]

And during the Long Night, on the opposite side of the world, they had a Long Day. The Other-Others marched down from the giant lava lake known as the Lands of Always Summer, bringing the heat with them. They raised an army of antiwights (living soldiers who just lie there not moving... not quite as useful as wights) and made war with the First Blokes and the Children of the Desert. But then came the First Hero, with a magic bucket of murky water named Darkbringer that he'd drawn first from steel, then from a tiger, and then from his husband Sirhan Sirhan, and he led the forces of darkness to defeat the Other-Others. Bruce the Builder then dug a giant trench, 300 miles across and 700 feet deep, to prevent them ever crossing again.

LOL
I laughed too hard at this.

[Codename: Nymeria]

And during the Long Night, on the opposite side of the world, they had a Long Day. The Other-Others marched down from the giant lava lake known as the Lands of Always Summer, bringing the heat with them. They raised an army of antiwights (living soldiers who just lie there not moving... not quite as useful as wights) and made war with the First Blokes and the Children of the Desert. But then came the First Hero, with a magic bucket of murky water named Darkbringer that he'd drawn first from steel, then from a tiger, and then from his husband Sirhan Sirhan, and he led the forces of darkness to defeat the Other-Others. Bruce the Builder then dug a giant trench, 300 miles across and 700 feet deep, to prevent them ever crossing again.

 

Also where vegemite comes from.

[falcotron]

There's also this from SSM, which admittedly hasn't made sense to me after looking at it like five times (http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Asshai.com_Forum_Chat)
 
[Are the seasons irregular only in Westeros or also in the eastern continent?]
 
The eastern continent (Essos) is further south than Westeros, and feels the North of the great sweep of the eastern sweep of the eastern lands is a huge ocean, the Shivering Sea. Only Westeros extends to the far north.

I think what he's getting at (in part because I think he's said something similar but more comprehensible elsewhere, but I can't find it...) is that Essos does have the long summers and winters, but they don't affect it nearly as much because (1) they're farther south in general, (2) their coldest places are cold because of an ocean (which tends to equalize temperature extremes), and (3) they're not directly connected to the Lands of Always Winter.

But also keep in mind that we've seen little of Lorath or Ib, and a lot more of Volantis, the Three Daughters, Qarth, and Slaver's Bay, so our view of Essos would probably be a little skewed anyway. Even if the winters are bad enough in Lorath that a man loses half his family in a bad one, in Volantis is probably just means you have to buy an extra fire-tending slave to keep the halls comfortable enough for your bed slaves to walk around naked.

EDIT: Forgot that you can't do (a) ( B) (c) without getting a stupid smiley in the middle.

[Ser Greenseer]

I don't know how the Dothraki would survive a winter. Their grasslands would die, their horses would starve and they would all freeze to death.

[Lord Ravenstark]

There are description of some tropical plants, if their flora is anything like ours, these plants wouldn't survive a winter of any length, meaning tropical eternal spring.

[falcotron]

There are description of some tropical plants, if their flora is anything like ours, these plants wouldn't survive a winter of any length, meaning tropical eternal spring.

GRRM has made it clear elsewhere that the winters don't affect southern Westeros very badly (Dorne worries more about summer droughts than winter frosts, it never snows in the Reach, etc.), but I'm sure the same is even more true for southern Essos, northern Sothyros, the Summer Isles, etc.

I don't know how the Dothraki would survive a winter. Their grasslands would die, their horses would starve and they would all freeze to death.

I don't know how the Dothraki would survive a normal decade. Nomadic horse raiders who live off tribute can't completely destroy all civilization in an area the size of Europe and spend 300 years making sure nobody rebuilds it. The nearest source of tribute is thousands of miles away, unless you want to cross a huge desert to bother Qarth, or go see if that one struggling Ibbish colony has a bucket of fish bones you can steal.

[Walda]

The thing that makes my head hurt most is GRRM's botany. Makes no sense at all.

Second worst, the idea that a long summer means a longer winter. Unless they define a long winter in a way that makes it considerably shorter than a long summer.

 

I'm pretty sure GRRM doesn't care about tropics or what is happening in the southern hemisphere, either. My best guess is he is writing with a medieval conciousness, with Sothoryos being the Great Southern Land, Terra Australis Incognita,  the mega-continent that was described in the middle ages and commonly added to maps of the world from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, even though it did not exist.

 

GRRM's ideas of the seasons seem to be based on the seasons of Upstate New York, the Rockies, Redwood National and State Park,  about 35°N - 45°N, even when he is ostensibly talking about (apparently) North polar regions, or deserts, or tropics.  Although, assuming GRRth  even has a North pole, or tropics, might be assuming too much.

 

There is no way of matching his ecology, his agriculture, his commodities trading and his food and textiles descriptions to each other or the seasons. Aspects of particular locations are consistent within themselves, but it is more like 'Dorne =medieval Spain, North = Scotland/Norse'  when it comes to culture, and when it comes to natural flora and fauna, the different places resemble various national parks in the North Americas at various seasons, even if one is not particularly compatible with the other (eg. Shadowcats in the Mountains of the Moon seem to be living a precarious co-existence with far too many ferocious mountain-clans that prize their skins, isolated in an area surrounded by fertile large acre farms, owned by mostly impoverished aristocrats, who trap the cats and clans-people for their poaching, when they stray onto their property, and hunting them for sport when they don't).

 

I'm more bothered with what Craster's wives were saying about the white cold rising (SoS, Ch.33 Samwell II) - all the sons they have birthed over the summer are gone, none apparently lived as long as three years,  and all their sheep, male and female both, are gone too. It's only fall (which may or may not happen in Autumn). If the prologue is a clue, the white cold has been coming since at least mid-summer and has nothing to do with the seasons.