Why are winters so cold in sub-tropical and tropical Australia?

[Ethereal]

Originally Posted by Stumbler.

There'd be continental climates to the extreme there with incredible temperature swings.

Perhaps it'd be like the climate of the Canadian prairies, Siberia or Mongolia on steroids, in the southern high latitudes.
Might be a really exotic-looking hypothetical place in terms of landscape, vegetation and geography if it could exist.

Yes, but if Australia were a large continental mass connected to Antarctica I don't think cities like Perth or Sydney would get that cold. They might be Charleston-cold (rare snow), but not to the continental level of Chicago or Toronto.

[Caleb Yeung]

20c

[diazjulianms]

Originally Posted by tom77falcons

Your explanation sounds reasonable. I remember looking at averages at Alice Springs and thinking it was due to the dry conditions and radiational cooling at night. Can you imagine how cold it would get if the Aus continent extended to Antartica.

If there were other continent in the south of australia and stretch till antartica.. melbourne will have the same cold as NYC in Winter and snow of course, not just melbourne, sydney will have some snow and snowy mountains will be having such a colddd climatee.. canberra will be cold and very snowy in winter...

[Ethereal]

The highlands of South America seem to get lows around -8C in the winter and they're on Rio De Janeiro's latitude.

I guess that's unfair since they're elevated places.