The sun is at its furthest in July.gettyMany parts of the northern hemisphere are seeing the hottest temperatures ever recorded despite the fact that our planet is at the point in its orbit when the physical distance between all of us and the sun is at its greatest.Its aphelion day 2021, the spot in our elliptical orbit of that big ball of fire in which were furthest away from our star. Officially, aphelion occurs at 6:27 p.m. EDT on July 5. MORE FROM FORBESCanada Has Never Been This Hot; We're Talking Death Valley HotBy Eric MackThats right, our path around the sun is oval, rather than circle-shaped, meaning we are usually moving ever slightly closer or more distant from the sun.The differences arent huge, however. When earth is nearest the sun, in earliest January, its only a little more than three percent closer than it is on July 5, according to NASA.But surely this has to result in a little bit of extra heat making it to the surface of the planet, right? Yes, just a tad. About seven percent, the space agency tells us. That pales in comparison to the nearly three-fold increase in heating that many middle latitude locations experience between their respective winter and summer solstices. Bottom line, the tilt of earth on its axis that gives us our seasons results in temperature swings over the same six-month period between aphelion and perihelion (when earth is closest to the sun) that are orders of magnitude more drastic.Perihelion and aphelion versus the solstices and the equinoxes.Gothika/Duoduoduo/Wikimedia commons 3.0 licenseStill, you could make the case that the crazy, record-breaking temperatures brought on by the heat wave of the past month in the northern hemisphere were slightly less than they would have been if the same patterns emerged in the south in late December and early January.Indeed, if we could flip Earths orbit so that we were approaching perihelion rather than aphelion at the end of June, the new all-time high for Canada of 121 degrees Fahrenheit set last month may have been closer to 125 degrees, arguably. Does this mean the southern hemisphere has it worse off because its summer coincides with perihelion? You would think so, but climate and weather patterns are complex. The south seems to experience less dramatic seasonal temperature swings because far less of its real estate is taken up by land masses than in the north. Thats just one of many variables; the tiny impact of perihelion is easily lost in a sea of other factors.When it comes down to it, our location in orbit amounts to a rounding error in temperature differences. Climate change, on the other hand, continues to add pressure that pushes average position of mercury in a thermometer ever higher with each passing season.