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The climate of California varies widely from hot desert to alpine tundra, depending on latitude, elevation, and proximity to the Pacific Coast. California 's coastal regions, the Sierra Nevada foothills, and much of the Central Valley have a Mediterranean climate , with warmer, drier weather in summer and cooler, wetter weather in winter.
Map of California topography and geomorphic provinces California's major mountain ranges. California is a U.S. state on the western coast of North America.Covering an area of 163,696 sq mi (423,970 km 2), California is among the most geographically diverse states.
The two frigid zones, or polar regions, experience the midnight sun and the polar night for part of the year – at the edge of the zone there remains one day, the winter solstice, when the Sun is too low to rise, and one day at the summer solstice when the Sun remains above the horizon for 24 hours.
Visualization of the ice and snow covering Earth's northern and southern polar regions Northern Hemisphere permafrost (permanently frozen ground) in purple. The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles.
These climates are in the polar front region in winter, and thus have moderate temperatures and changeable, rainy weather. Summers are hot and dry, due to the domination of the subtropical high-pressure systems, except in the immediate coastal areas, where summers are milder due to the nearby presence of cold ocean currents that may bring fog ...
A snowy landscape of Inari located in Lapland A polar bear with cub. On Earth, the only continent where the ice cap polar climate is predominant is Antarctica. All but a few isolated coastal areas on the island of Greenland also have the ice cap climate. Summits of many high mountains also have ice cap climate due to their high elevation.
Another early example of this system is the world map by ‛Ali b. Ahmad al-Sharafi of Sfax in 1571. [3] The projection appears in many Renaissance maps, and Gerardus Mercator used it for an inset of the north polar regions in sheet 13 and legend 6 of his well-known 1569 map.
Within the Southern California Bight, a sub-region of the California Current has unique physical properties. Upwelling is fairly weak in the California Bight and Smith and Eppley (1982) stated that the 16-year average for primary production was 0.402 grams carbon/(meter-squared × day), or approximately 150 grams carbon/(meter-squared × year).