California is nearer the equator than london, so, although angled away from the sun, it's not as much of an angle as it is in london

The length of the day has to essentially due with the shadow of the earth. Night time is being in earth's shadow. Because the earth is at angle to the sun, the sun does not koe directly over head, meaning the number of degrees the sun has to travel across the sky are fewer. So, the earth rotates the same number of degrees per minute (roughly) and when the sun has to traverse fewer degrees to make it nighttime again it becomes nighttime sooner.

California is further south than London. Since it's summer in the Southern hemisphere, the days are longer there. The further South you go, the longer the days are, because you're closer to where the sun is directly overhead.

Conversely, if you were at the geographical North Pole right now, you would have zero daylight all day, as they are so far North that the sun doesn't come up over the horizon. They have a several-month-long night.

The tilt of the Earth's axis. The axis the Earth spins on is not straight up and down when you look at the orbit that the Earth takes around the sun. It is tilted at 23 degrees. If you look at a globe, you'll see something called the arctic circle. Winter happens in the northern hemisphere where the axis is pointed away from the sun. If you are north of the arctic circle, you will have a period where the sun never rises in the winter. As you head south, the day period gets longer and as you go south of the equator, you find it has gotten longer still until you are at the south pole and find that it has 24 hour a day sunlight for a period.

 

Bottom line, the north pole points away from the sun in northern hemisphere winter and the closer you are to it, the shorter the days.

It's due to the tilt of the earth's axis, the further north the shorter the days in winter but longer in summer. So London has a shorter winter day than californa but longer summers day

Wut.....

When the sun is lower in the sky, as in, the angle between the sun and horizon is smaller, the sun has to traverse fewer degrees across the sky to set. So it sets sooner. It's because the earth spins at an angle relati e to the plane it orbits the sun along

The "wut" was rhetorical.

The closer to the equator you are, the more equal lengths of day and night are all year round. California is much closer to the equator than the UK is.

Fun fact: everywhere gets the same amount of daylight throughout the year. So while California is getting more sun than London right now, London will get more sun than California during the summer!