A central conceit of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books (and the popular HBO series Game of Thrones based on them) is that the seasons of the planet where they take place are not as predictable as the Earth's annual cycle. Somehow the phrase "winter is coming" wouldn't seem as foreboding if you could reply, "Yes, that usually happens in December through February."
But how could a planet have unruly seasons? Earth's seasons are due to the tilt of its axis. During one part of Earth's orbit, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, with the resulting indirect sunlight spread thin over the surface of the hemisphere, causing winter. On the opposite side of its orbit, summer comes as this hemisphere is tilted toward direct sunlight. There isn't much room in such clockwork for randomness.
Well, if you've ever wanted to debate fan theories, here's an excellent new resource for you to draw from: a real climate model simulation of Westeros and Essos.
Source: Ars Technica
(Score: 1) by pdfernhout on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:43AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_stream [wikipedia.org]
https://phys.org/news/2016-07-gulf-stream-slowdown-europe-worst.html [phys.org]
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112712586/gulf-stream-new-england-101312/ [redorbit.com]
Although, this suggest other possibilities like mountain formation or unstable atmospheric patterns:
http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/ [columbia.edu]
"Fifty percent of the winter temperature difference across the North Atlantic is caused by the eastward atmospheric transport of heat released by the ocean that was absorbed and stored in the summer.
Fifty percent is caused by the stationary waves of the atmospheric flow.
The ocean heat transport contributes a small warming across the basin."
So, it may be a mix... If such a place existed. :-)
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.