User:Scaredhacrow

Climate

Student’s name Course name and number Instructor’s name Date submitted To begin, let's first discuss what temperature controls are. Essentially, there are many different factors included in these controls. Fortunately for this assignment, we will only be looking at four different atmospheric temperatures and climate controls. Let's first begin with latitude control. Latitude control goes hand in hand with cloud cover and albedo. As we learned in this week's lesson, clouds are constantly protecting the earth from overheating. They do this by reflecting heat, which in turn controls temperatures on earth. This is where albedo comes in, which can be briefly defined as the amount of energy/heat reflected into the atmosphere and eventually space. Now going back to its connection to latitude, due to snow cover, cloud coverage, and, solar zenith angle albedo increases with latitude (Hess, 2017). All of these factors increase with latitude. As the latitude of a geographic point increases, the temperature decreases. Albedo doesn't decrease with latitude because both our atmosphere and ocean move the heat toward the poles. For the second temperature control, we have the altitude. As we briefly learned in the course reading, various altitudes are going to have an air frequency, density, and pressure that will be, for the most part, reciprocal to the altitude, thus altering the temperature at that specific geographic position. Thirdly, we have the differential heating of land and water. As touched on in the course reading, the land on earth will retain hot and cold temperatures at various rates. This also applies when looking at the ocean temperatures. Land, for instance, can heat as well as cool down at a somewhat rapid rate. As for the ocean, this has a particular heating and cooling process that is, by far, a much more gradual rate and process than the one on land. Lastly, we have the ocean currents. Ocean currents have various flows and movements that hold both warm and cold water. Essentially this results in heat being sent to the poles, which have a considerable effect on the land temperature. Now that I've explained temperature controls let's take a look at our two primary locations. First, we have Louisville, Kentucky. As I had explained before, as latitude increases, temperature decreases, which applies both ways; vice versa. That being said, Louisville's latitude is 38 degrees N, affecting the temperature oppositely because they are inversely related. Now looking at Bangkok, we can see that the latitude is 13 degrees N. Because of this, the temperature is going to be the opposite. As for altitude, Louisville's elevation of 481ft affects the temperature by making it warmer but not necessarily hot. Kentucky falls into a moderate temperature category. If the elevation was higher, the temperature would be colder, but this is not the case. Referring back to Bangkok, we can see that their elevation is only 53ft, meaning that it is very warm there. Next, let's look at how the land/water contrasts in Louisville and its effect on the temperature. Their land/water contrast makes it cooler because they are located next to a body of water. Much like Louisville, Bangkok's land/water contrast also makes their temperature slightly cooler because they are located next to a water body. Now, we can look at the ocean current's effects on the two locations. This has little effect on the city of Louisville because there is not an ocean nearby. On the contrary, this does affect Bangkok because it is located directly by an ocean. This could mean a few things. For one thing, it means they receive lots of warm air. It also means that the currents cause drastic changes in their temperatures. References Hess, Darrel. (2017). McKnight’s Physical Geography: a landscape appreciation. (12th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education.