Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Perhaps the best way to understand weather in a certain location is to compare it with another. At roughly 59 degrees N and 153 degrees W, Augustine Island, Ak is located at a latitude where the subpolar lows meet the westerlies, and lies almost directly in the Aleutian Low in the winter, and affected by the Pacific High in the summer. Contrarily, Dublin, Ireland, is located slightly below Augustine on the latitude spectrum at 53 degrees N and 6 degrees W longitude. These coordinates put it in an interesting location, in between the Icelandic Low and Azores High in the winter, and largely affected by the Bermuda High in the summer. Below gives a visual contrast of each location in winter. Augustine appears to look mild with its clear skies, however in the winter clear skies can be bitter cold in Alaska. When it is not in the middle of a mid-latitude cyclone, clear skies indicate cold weather. Dublin does not experience the extreme temperature changes because of its lower latitude in that instead it is dominated by the westerlies and high pressure systems which keep the climate relatively mild. Although they are both influenced by maritime systems that create rather moist and dreary climates, Mount Augustine is slightly further north and is further from the Pacific High, so it experiences the extreme cold in the winter that Dublin is not impacted by.

www.bostonphoto.com

www.flickr/people/jogorman/

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