factors affecting climate?

Question

how does latitude, relief/elevation,waterbodies,air masses, and ocean currents affect the climate?

Answer 1

Many things affect the climate different ways.

Did you know that the Polar Ice Caps of Mars are melting ... how id HUMANS cause the climate change there? Trick question, human action is not the ONLY thing that affects climate. Some people say that the DUST STORMS on Mars are causing the Ice Caps to melt, but how come NOW & not thousands of years ago?

Well what planet Mars and planet Earth have in common is the Sun ... its output fluctuates various ways, and that has a HUGE impact on climate.

We should not confuse climate with weather.

Weather is if it rains today, we have a hurricane next week. Climate is the pattern of this ... will we have another year like the one with Katrina & many other hurricanes that year, so many that they used up the alphabet A-Z in naming them, and had to switch to another alphabet.

Closer to the North Pole and South Pole, it is generally colder, depending on the direction of ocean currents ... Great Britain is at about the same latitude as Northern Canada. Northern Canada is such a frozen wasteland, that 99% of the population of Canada lives along their border with USA. But Great Britain is year round temperate climate. What makes that difference is the Gulf Stream ocean current.

Along coast lines, the ocean tends to moderate temperature extremes, although it can get very humid.

Deep inland, there are greater temperature extrmes, because farther from major water of the planet.

High up, less atmospheric moderation.

Where we have hilly terrain, as opposed to flat lands ... well you really need to visit & look around. The prevailing weather is very much influenced by the shape of the land that the winds go through. Some places are a magnet for tornadoes to be more likely to touch donw.

If we had a better understanding of this, we could do city zoning to better design a city layout to be tornado proof, but science has not yet advanced far enough to do that.

Answer 2

Latitude at the equator is 0. It tends to become colder as you go north or south of the equator. The higher the elevation, the colder it becomes. Water bodies (oceans, lakes) serve as a conduit for air masses. They carry air over their surfaces faster than on land. Therefore, Cleveland Ohio has a lot of cold weather because it is on Lake Erie which carries winds from the north across it. Ocean currents (El Nino, Transatlantic) can carry warm or cool air for thousands of miles. That is why London, England is as warm as it is compared to its latitude. In other words, warm air is carried from the Caribbean all the way to London by ocean currents.
London is way further north than Maine but has a milder climate.

Answer 3

pollution, another factor