What Influences Climate?

What influences climate? It is a question that many people ask. Well, the weather patterns of the different regions of the Earth are influenced by several factors, not by only one. These nature's elements, which contribute to the yearly climate of a territory, or country, are the following:

1- The winds. They could bring humid, dry, cold, or warm air. A mass of humid warm air produces rain when it collides with a mass of dry cold air.

2- Ocean currents. They influence the temperature and even the rainfall patterns of coastal regions. There are two types; warm and cold. The Gulf Stream, for example, is a warm current, flowing from the Gulf of Mexico in a southwest-northeast direction. It reaches the northern coast of France and the Southern coast of England and Wales, influencing the weather of these countries. This is the reason why England is not so cold in Winter as it is in central Russia, even though they both lie on approximately the same latitude.

3- Mountain ranges. Chains of mountains influence considerably the climate of a region, because the act as natural barriers that block and hold back the winds. Usually, they determine the formation of two weather patterns, with one side of the mountain range being humid with rain forests, and dry and desert on the other side. One example is the Blue Mountains of Australia, which act as the natural boundary between the rain forests and the Australian Outback, which is very dry, like a desert.

4- Latitude. It determines how far a city or country can lie from the equator. The farther a region lies from the Earth's mid line, the less sunshine it will receives, especially in Winter time. Thus, countries such Finland, Russia, and Sweden are very cold in winter, while Brazil and Ecuador are not cold at all, because the lie on the equator, which is the imaginary line that divides the Earth into a northern and a southern hemisphere.

5- Altitude. Almost everybody knows that temperature starts dropping when we begin climbing up a mountain. For example, on a Summer day, the temperature of Argentinean city of Mendoza, which lies at the foot of the Andes Range, might be 35 degrees Celcius (about 100 F.) but it could be -20 degrees on top of the Aconcagua Mt.