Overview: Mid Latitude Climates

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Group-2: Midlatitude Climates

Remember -- The midlatitudes are a broad, midlatitude zone of conflicting air masses

  • mT, cT, mP, cP, cA = air masses sometimes present in midlatitudes
  • "Conflicting" air masses = weather fronts

These climates are much more dominant in the northern hemisphere

  • Much more landmass in northern hemisphere, than in southern hemisphere, to produce the necessary air masses and fronts

Study this Figure -- All 6 types of midlatitude climates

  • Notice that all 6 climate types have visually distinct annual temperature ranges, although some more so than others
  • The different precipitation regimes are visually very distinct
  • Three types have nearly uniform monthly precipitation
    • Dry subtropical is very dry
    • Moist continental has "medium" amounts of monthly precipitation
    • Moist subtropical has quite a lot precipitation per month
  • Two types of climate have wet winters
    • Mediterranean has a very dry summer
    • Marine west-coast has an almost dry summer and much wetter cool season than the mediterranean climate
  • The questions are these:
    • Which climate type has which temperature and precipitation combination?
    • In which geographic settings do they occur?
      • Continental or marine?
      • Which of the middle latitude, N-S possibilities?
      • Which pressure systems, storm systems, and air masses are responsible for the precipitation patterns?

Six Midlatitude Climographs

Click to return to lecture notes!

You should be able to translate the visual look of both the temperature and the precipitation graphs into words.  Pay attention to the graphs with regard to the months of the year and the temperatures, plus, the amounts of precipitation.  Of course you need to consult the text background for each of these climate types.  The point:  There are mid-latitude climates and there are mid-latitude climates.  Just because they are "mid-latitude" doesn't make them that similar; some are very different from the others. You should be aware of the reasons for their characteristics, their "controls."

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