Latitude provides the location of a place north or south of the equator and is expressed by angular measurements ranging from 0° at the equator to 90° at the poles. Different latitudes on Earth receive different amounts of sunlight, and are a key factor in determining a region’s climate. For example, the higher the latitude of a given place (the farther away it is from the equator), the sharper the angle of the sun’s rays that reach it, meaning that the rays of the sun are spread across a broader area. Therefore, higher latitudes receive less heat than lower latitude areas nearer the equator.
The Earth’s axis is tilted 23.5° to the perpendicular, meaning that the amount of sunlight that a particular latitude receives changes with the seasons. From April to September, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun, where it receives more energy; the Southern Hemisphere receives this additional energy between October and March, when it is tilted toward the Sun.
Although there is no specific ‘type’ of climate, there are three general climate zones: arctic, temperate, and tropic.
Arctic
From 66.5N to the North Pole is the Arctic; from 66.5S to the South Pole is the Antarctic. Places within the arctic climate zones tend to be snow- or ice-covered year-round. This is despite the fact that they tend also to be exceptionally dry, sometimes receiving as little precipitation as the world’s driest deserts. Very little snow falls on these high-latitude regions, but even less melts due to the cold temperatures and scarce sunlight. The deep ice and snow that covers these regions has been built up over hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. In these regions, the Sun hovers above the horizon at midnight in the summer and never rises at all at times during the winter.
The temperate zone is located between the arctic and tropic zones. However, ‘temperate climate’ is something of a misnomer since most regions located within the temperate climate zones experience distinct changes across four seasons. For example, in much of eastern North America – from the Ohio Valley in the United States to the southern shores of Hudson Bay in Canada – the ‘temperate’ climate can experience both arctic and tropical weather in the same year. These climate variations increase the further an area is from an ocean or another large body of water; they diminish in areas where oceans and other large bodies of water are able to influence the climate more strongly. Temperate regions are also affected by the direction of the air flow they receive. Areas in Canada, for example, have cool Arctic air passing through, while the southern United States receives warm air from the Gulf Stream.