why is climate affected by latitude? altitude?

Answer 1

Solar radiation and earth's atmosphere are the two factors determining the diiferent type of climates on the earth.Among these two,solar radiation plays an important role in deciding the weather(or climate) of a place.
The heat produced by the solar radiation over a place depends upon the latitude and altitude.
Latitude:- The angle of incidence of the sun's rays at the earth's surface increases from the tropics towards the poles and hence the amount of heat received on a given area diminishes towards the poles.Temperature is therefore normally highest in the tropics and lowest in the polar regions. So,latitude affects the temperature and thereby the climate of a place.
Altitude:- The incident solar radiation does not heat the atmosphere directly;instead it heats the earth's surface first and the atmosphere is actually heated by the reflected long-wave radiation from the surface by conduction.Hence the atmosphere is heated from the bottom.So,temperature decreases as you go up in the atmosphere.Hence the altitude also affects the temperature of the place and thereby the climate of that place.

Answer 2

Latitude determines the angle of the sun which determines how much the ground is heated. The air is cooler as you go up in altitude.

Answer 3

With latitude, you've got the Coriolis Effect playing a factor. I remember the name, even though I've forgotten exactly how it works. It involves the Earth's rotation.

Answer 4

I can answer latitude, because the sun shines on the equator. The farther away you are from the equator, the cooler it gets because you are getting farther away from the sun's heat.