The 2025 summer solstice seen from deep space, with Vivaldi's Summer.

On June 21st, 2025, the northern hemisphere has its longest day of the year. The southern hemisphere has its shortest, winter having just begun. From 1.5 million kilometers away, Earth's axial tilt is at its maximum, the north pole fully turned toward the sun. In Australia and South America, winter brings cold fronts, frosts and droughts that will worsen through spring. In the north, heatwaves spread across Europe and Asia, wildfires multiply, and monsoons intensify over South Asia. The Amazon basin is entering its dry season, when most deforestation fires are deliberately set. Ocean temperatures reach their yearly peak, feeding the tropical storms and hurricanes that will follow.

Vivaldi's sonnet for Summer, 1724:

Under the unforgiving sun of the season
The man and the herd are languishing, the pine is burning.
The cuckoo begins to sing and immediately
The dove and the goldfinch join him.
A light breeze is blowing, but
Boreas Woke up to suddenly fight with his neighbor,
And the shepherd cries because above his head
The formidable storm and its destiny.
His weary limbs are deprived of rest,
Fear of lightning and scary thunder
And flies and hornets swarming.
Alas, his fears come true:
Thunder and lightning are raging in the skies.
And the hail cuts down the great wheat.

Vivaldi wrote of summer as a season of tension and violence. From space, that reads clearly.