• Question: Why do different places have different climates?

    Asked by lisaloo to Claire, Sam on 28 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Claire Lee

      Claire Lee answered on 28 Jun 2013:

      Weather is affected by a lot of things – what the land is like, whether there is water near by, any mountains etc around, wind currents, how much sunlight it gets – all of that! Event where the planet is in relation to how the earth turns will affect it! Just a small difference in any of these can change the climate profoundly.

      There is an island called Tenerife in the canary islands (off the coast of Morocco) which is only about 70km or something from top to bottom. It has a huge extinct volcano in the middle going up to 3800m or so. Clouds from the north (UK, Europe) come down and get stuck against the volcano, causing it to rain just on the north side. As a result, this single island is tropical in the north, but like a desert in the south!

      xkcd has a fantastic “What if” post too about what would happen if we just rotated all the land in earth by 90 degrees:
      http://what-if.xkcd.com/10/

    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 28 Jun 2013:

      Various reasons! The biggest thing is the latitude – i.e. distance from the equator. The equator gets more sunlight and is warmer than the poles. Air flows matter – there are different air flows that encourage rainfall or make places dry, which is why there’s a band of desert in Africa and then jungles. Ocean flows help – warm water from the Caribbean means that the UK is far warmer than Canada. Places far from the ocean are also warmer in summer and colder in winter because the ocean absorbs heat in the summer and releases it in winter. Finally, microclimates can happen where mountains or valleys trap rain, etc.

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