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For example, with an axial tilt is 23°, and at a latitude of 45°, then the summer's peak sun angle is 68° (giving sin(68°) = 93% insolation at the surface), while winter's least sun angle is 22° (giving sin(22°) = 37% insolation at the surface). Thus, the greater the axial tilt, the stronger the seasons' variations at a given latitude. [4]
The smaller-scale weather systems – mid-latitude depressions, or tropical convective cells – occur chaotically, and long-range weather predictions of those cannot be made beyond ten days in practice, or a month in theory (see chaos theory and the butterfly effect). The Earth's weather is a consequence of its illumination by the Sun and the ...
Because most of the planet's snow and ice lies at high latitude, decreasing tilt may encourage the termination of an interglacial period (and lead to an overall cooler climate) and the onset of a glacial period for two reasons: 1) there is less overall summer insolation, and 2) there is less insolation at higher latitudes (which melts less of ...
World leaders are meeting in Paris this month in what amounts to a last-ditch effort to avert the worst ravages of climate change. Climatologists now say that the best case scenario — assuming immediate and dramatic emissions curbs — is that planetary surface temperatures will increase by at least 2 degrees Celsius in the coming decades.
The effect of latitude, tropical climate, constant gentle wind, and seaside locations show smaller average temperature ranges, smaller variations of temperature, and a higher average temperature (the graph on the right, taken for the same period as Campinas, at Aracaju, also in Brazil and located at a latitude of 10 degrees, nearer to the Equator).
As the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear, while the planet has so far seen an average temperature rise of 1.2 degrees Celsius and will ...
A related phenomenon driven by climate change is woody plant encroachment, affecting up to 500 million hectares globally. [218] Climate change has contributed to the expansion of drier climate zones, such as the expansion of deserts in the subtropics. [219] The size and speed of global warming is making abrupt changes in ecosystems more likely ...
One historical long-term correlation between solar activity and climate change is the 1645–1715 Maunder minimum, a period of little or no sunspot activity which partially overlapped the "Little Ice Age" during which cold weather prevailed in Europe. The Little Ice Age encompassed roughly the 16th to the 19th centuries.