Four weeks of climate data:The Southern Tropics

As we move south from the Northern Temperate Zone, we get more ocean and less land mass. With the Southern Tropics, I decided not to be so arbitrary about the width of the six regions and cut this part of the world into six slices that made sense geographically. The first slice is the usual width of 60 degrees of longitude and covers Africa and Madagascar.

 

The next slice is thinner and is mostly open Indian Ocean.

The last slice of the Eastern Hemisphere is wider than usual and covers the Southern part of Indonesia, the tropical part of Australia, all of New Guinea and some of the islands east of Australia, best known to Americans as the places where the Pacific theater of World War II was fought.

The first slice of the Western Hemisphere is more open ocean, this time the South Pacific.

The second slice gives us all of South America and the Galapagos.

The last slice is open ocean in the south Atlantic.

Later today, we will look at the numbers for the first two sections.

Four weeks of climate data: Six regions for Antarctica

The second slice of the globe we will look at is Antarctica. In the northern polar region, I made the Arctic Circle the cut off line, but in the south I move the region out to the 60° Southern Latitude so the whole of the southern continent is included and nothing else.

We start at 0° Longitude and move east to 60° Longitude East for the first region.
 

60° to 120° Longitude east.

The third slice gets part of the inlet known as the Ross Sea.

Slice #4 is the first part of Western Antartica.

Antarctica has an effective population density of zero people per square mile, even less than Greenland. There's nobody there and there many nearby populated land masses. This region has the closest distance, about 800 miles across Drake's Passage to Tierra Del Fuego, some of the coldest, choppiest seas in the world.
 

Region 6 has another large inlet called the Weddell Sea. The Weddell and Ross Seas are home to the largest of the ice shelves that surround the place.

Later today, we look at the first and second slices, with some surprising results in terms of climate data.

Four weeks of climate data:Six regions for the Arctic Circle

And it starts all over again.

We start with the Arctic Circle, defined by the tilt of the earth, the region that experiences six months of darkness and six months of light each year, with the light and dark split getting more pronounced the farther north you travel.

It struck me that I could get through the data faster by splitting some latitudinal slices into six regions instead of twelve. The tropics and the polar regions take up less latitude than the temperate, so I will still be splitting the temperate zones into twelve parts, but the polar and tropical into six. The first slice is the polar part of Europe and a few Arctic islands.

Next is the second region, the central Russian polar section, again with some large Arctic islands.

The third region is polar Siberia.

The fourth region gets us to the Western Hemisphere, with parts of Russia, Alaska and Canada.

The fifth region is almost entirely Canadian with just a small slice of Greenland. Most of the land mass is made up of the Queen Elizabeth Islands.

The final region, as luck would have it, is almost all of polar Greenland.

Later today, we will be looking at the first two regions. At two regions a day, we will be finished with the Arctic this weekend and start looking at Antarctica on Monday.

Stay tuned.

Six weeks of climate data: Week 2 SundayMaps of the Antarctic Circle

This week is about Antarctica, the remotest region on earth. Most folks hardly think about the differences between the Artic and Antarctic, both of them being just very cold places very far away. But people have lived above the Arctic Circle for millenia, while no one has ever made a true home in Antarctica. I cheated a little with the map today, which I nicked from Wikipedia. I thought the innermost circle drawn around the southern continent was the Antarctic Circle, but instead it's the 60° Latitude line. The only major difference in terms of land mass is the pointy peninsula close to South America is the only part of the continent that is outside the Circle.

Region 1: 437 readings

As I said before, there's nobody in Antarctica. In the Arctic Circle, the slice with the least readings had about 1,500. In Antarctica, The most measured region has about 2,000 readings in the 56 years and the least has just over 200.

Region 2: 540 readings

There are political distinctions between the regions, but these are distinctions with little difference. This is part of the region called Queen Maud Land. Several countries claim some of the Antarctic territory, but many of these claims are disputed.

Region 3: 990 readings

It's 9% of the earth's land mass, but it has no currency, no official language, no national capital.

This little inlet contains the Amery Ice Shelf. The ice shelves are of the most interest to researchers.

Region 4: 319 readings

The people who live there are scientists and researchers. There are about 40,000 tourists each year.

Region 5: 523 readings

Region 6: 2,159 readings

This indent is the Ross Sea, home of the Ross Ice Shelf. With over 2,000 readings, it's the most covered region in Antarctica, more than twice as many reading as the next two most popular regions combined.

Region 7: 220 readings

Just next door to the Ross Ice Shelf, barely a tenth as many readings.

Region 8: 306 readings

This area is named for Marie Byrd, wife of Admiral Byrd who claimed this region for the United States. This is the area where the movie The Thing is set.

Region 9: 208 readings

Not much interest in Antarctica away from the regions with ice shelves.

Region 10: 831 readings

This side of the Antarctic Peninsula is called Bellingshausen.

Region 11: 573 readings

This indent is the Weddell Sea. Regions 11 and 12 are home to the Western Ice Shelf, which is reported to be losing mass at an increasing rate.

Region 12: 940 readings

Because we are traveling eastward from the zero longitude, we will not discuss the West Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS) until next Saturday.

Tomorrow: Regions 1 and 2 of Antarctica.