Is there a way to, given a date, retrieve the season of the year? For any place on the globe?
Is this based on time zone as well as hemisphere?
Note that, In the southern hemisphere that summer is still during the warm months.
EDIT:
To clarify, I am talking about the astronomical seasons.
I don't think this is standardized. Nor is this part of the well known globalization datasets.
You can use this simple code:
private int getSeason(DateTime date) { float value = (float)date.Month + date.Day / 100; // <month>.<day(2 digit)> if (value < 3.21 || value >= 12.22) return 3; // Winter if (value < 6.21) return 0; // Spring if (value < 9.23) return 1; // Summer return 2; // Autumn } To include the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere the code can become:
private int getSeason(DateTime date, bool ofSouthernHemisphere) { int hemisphereConst = (ofSouthernHemisphere ? 2 : 0); Func<int, int> getReturn = (northern) => { return (northern + hemisphereConst) % 4; }; float value = (float)date.Month + date.Day / 100f; // <month>.<day(2 digit)> if (value < 3.21 || value >= 12.22) return getReturn(3); // 3: Winter if (value < 6.21) return getReturn(0); // 0: Spring if (value < 9.23) return getReturn(1); // 1: Summer return getReturn(2); // 2: Autumn } The answer depends on exactly how you want to define each season. This chart at Wikipedia shows the exact day and time changes slightly from year-to-year.
A simple solution that might be "good enough" is to use four fixed dates, say: 20-March, 21-June, 22-September, and 21-December.
Someone else can rattle off the code for you quickly but from the very Wikipedia.org article you referenced we have this:
The temperate areas
We can clearly distinguish six seasons. Dates listed here are for the Northern Hemisphere:[citation needed]
You can then write a GetTemperateSeason() function to return the enumeration above based the month ranges.
public class Season { private const string WINTER = "Winter"; private const string SPRING = "Spring"; private const string SUMMER = "Summer"; private const string AUTUMN = "Autumn"; public string Name { get; set; } public string Value { get; set; } public List<Season> LastFiveBillingQuarters { get { IList<Season> billingPeriods = new List<Season>(); StringBuilder sbDisplayText; DateTime billingPeriod; for (int i = 0; i >= -12; i -= 3) { billingPeriod = DateTime.Now.AddMonths(i); var month = billingPeriod.Month; var day = billingPeriod.Day; var year = billingPeriod.Year; var ticks = billingPeriod.ToString(); sbDisplayText = new StringBuilder(); if ((month >= 12 || month < 03) & day >= 22) sbDisplayText.Append(WINTER); else if (month >= 09 & day >= 23) sbDisplayText.Append(AUTUMN); else if (month >= 06 & day >= 21) sbDisplayText.Append(SUMMER); else if (month >= 03 & day >= 21) sbDisplayText.Append(SPRING); sbDisplayText.Append(string.Format("{0}{1}", " ", year)); billingPeriods.Add(new Season() { Name = sbDisplayText.ToString(), Value = ticks }); } return billingPeriods.ToList(); } } } Personally, unless it was directly required, I would describe the different sections by the quarter rather than climate/period of the year.
northern/southern:
21/03 - start of spring/autumn
21/06 - start of summer/winter
23/09 - start of autumn/spring
22/12 - start of winter/summer
sometimes it IS delyed by one or two days, but for this you'll have to check in sites such as: timeanddate.com