Melbourne, Australia climate zone?

Question

For what reasons is it in the Maritime/Marine West Coast climate zone?

Answer 1

Who says it is? Melbourne is on the coast so its climate is affected by the sea and it is maritime rather than continental. I don't know what the "marine west coast" classification is. Melbourne's climate is warm temperate bordering on sub-tropical but with a winter maximum rainfall rather than the summer maximum more usual in the sub-tropics.

Answer 2

What do I think? The honest answer is I don't know. Australia is a strange place. I don't know if there is any way to look at the climate over the past 500 to 1000 years in Australia. Tree rings only give us a snap shot of the past 100 years or so. The majority of the land mass is very arid, so it is hard to draw conclusions about the causes of drought in the south east. We had a severe drought in central north America during the 1930's Was that due to weather patterns or climate change? I would ask the same question about Australia. Humans are terrible at separating normal random variation from variation due to a special cause. We tend to always assume a special cause. This is a mistake. We know general things about the world climate with a high degree of certainty. We know it is getting warmer over the long term. We know CO2 and greenhouse gases are the cause. We know human activity is the major source of those gases. However we cannot tie any short term weather pattern to any of these certainties. It is like trying to predict the roll of the dice.