Sunniest Versus Cloudiest: Phoenix, USA vs. Chongqing, China (record, temperature, rainfall)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
As far as the “striking difference between the moist subtropics of Australia and the USA… versus those of China, Japan, ect”…in terms of sunshine your likely right, the American and Australian humid subtropical zones (Cfa) are significantly sunnier than their East Asian counterparts. However, if you also mean be moisture “rainfall”…
I was using the term moist sub-tropics to mean these kind of climates:
And I said nothing about rainfall, only cloud cover.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wavehunter007
Chongqing’s elevation close to 1000 likely contributes to its very cloudy skies. I don’t know what annual sun hrs are in cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, ..etc but they are likely nearly double the hrs of Chongqing. In fact, fall and winter are generally sunny and dry in much of East Asia…much more than a station like Seattle I would think.
While a number of places in east Asia are sunnier in winter, the overall sunshine totals are lower than Seattle in just about the entire subtropical zone of East Asia. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Osaka are all considerably more cloudy than Seattle.
Taipei is a great example. Desipte being right near the tropic of Cancer ( and there for far more hours of daylight in winter, cloudy or sunny ), its cloudiest month gets just 71.3 hours of sunlight and its sunniest month creeps up to just 179.0hours, roughly half what Seattle gets on its sunniest month.
My ideal climate is rainy hot summers alternating with mild sunny winters, so the first place I looked was China with its summer monsoon, but surprisingly, its really only Yunnan in the far south-west that experiences sunny winters to any noticeable degree; most of the rest of the sub-tropical Far East area is grimmest in winter, desipte summer percipitation maximums. There just isn't a solidly sunny season for most of it.
Check out these spots dotted around the Far East to see what I mean.
It is a little better in the northern end of the range, though still on-par with much of Europe and below PNW standards:
But as one heads south and inland things get quite dire in terms of sunlight. Hong Kong is pretty much on par with the aforementioned, but many major cities are even dimmer:
But as one heads south and inland things get quite dire in terms of sunlight. Hong Kong is pretty much on par with the aforementioned, but many major cities are even dimmer:
This accords well with a sunshine duration map I photocopied from an old tome long ago. It shows a smallish area of east-central Asia with over 3000 hours, and a very small zone in the southeast with less than 1000.
And I said nothing about rainfall, only cloud cover.
While a number of places in east Asia are sunnier in winter, the overall sunshine totals are lower than Seattle in just about the entire subtropical zone of East Asia. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Osaka are all considerably more cloudy than Seattle.
Taipei is a great example. Desipte being right near the tropic of Cancer ( and there for far more hours of daylight in winter, cloudy or sunny ), its cloudiest month gets just 71.3 hours of sunlight and its sunniest month creeps up to just 179.0hours, roughly half what Seattle gets on its sunniest month.
My ideal climate is rainy hot summers alternating with mild sunny winters, so the first place I looked was China with its summer monsoon, but surprisingly, its really only Yunnan in the far south-west that experiences sunny winters to any noticeable degree; most of the rest of the sub-tropical Far East area is grimmest in winter, desipte summer percipitation maximums. There just isn't a solidly sunny season for most of it.
Check out these spots dotted around the Far East to see what I mean.
It is a little better in the northern end of the range, though still on-par with much of Europe and below PNW standards:
But as one heads south and inland things get quite dire in terms of sunlight. Hong Kong is pretty much on par with the aforementioned, but many major cities are even dimmer:
Hong Kong however has what you might want to call a solid sunny season. Around 180/h a month from Oct to Dec, that's not too bad - at least for Asian standards.
From my time spent there, fall felt really sunny, but late winter and early spring were memorably bad. I was in HK in Feb 2010 when they recorded only 30 hours of sun in the whole month (around 10%) including two completely overcast weeks
I'd go for Chongqing if it was cooler (hot and cloudy = worst combination for me) and less polluted (presumably the 1055 hours would be higher if it weren't for the heavy industry) as then it really wouldn't be that different to what I know, but as it is I have to grudgingly go for Phoenix, as at least winters are very pleasant.
Geez, I have a choice between living in a place with summer temperatures hot enough to make a brass doorknob mushy or a grotesquely overcrowded burg with air thick enough to cut with a chainsaw. What fun!
Neither is at all appealing and I would trade the both of them for a bottle of warm ale, flat as ink.
And I said nothing about rainfall, only cloud cover.
While a number of places in east Asia are sunnier in winter, the overall sunshine totals are lower than Seattle in just about the entire subtropical zone of East Asia. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Osaka are all considerably more cloudy than Seattle.
Taipei is a great example. Desipte being right near the tropic of Cancer ( and there for far more hours of daylight in winter, cloudy or sunny ), its cloudiest month gets just 71.3 hours of sunlight and its sunniest month creeps up to just 179.0hours, roughly half what Seattle gets on its sunniest month.
My ideal climate is rainy hot summers alternating with mild sunny winters, so the first place I looked was China with its summer monsoon, but surprisingly, its really only Yunnan in the far south-west that experiences sunny winters to any noticeable degree; most of the rest of the sub-tropical Far East area is grimmest in winter, desipte summer percipitation maximums. There just isn't a solidly sunny season for most of it.
Check out these spots dotted around the Far East to see what I mean.
It is a little better in the northern end of the range, though still on-par with much of Europe and below PNW standards:
But as one heads south and inland things get quite dire in terms of sunlight. Hong Kong is pretty much on par with the aforementioned, but many major cities are even dimmer:
First let me just post a climate classification map so we can see the two climate zones in East Asia:
I agree (esp after seeing all this great data you linked)… that no doubt subtropical (Cfa) East Asia is far less sunny than Cfa sectors in the USA/Australia. I’m a bit shocked to see the numbers from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Fuzhou…ect (1600/1900 hrs). I’ve read that the air pollution in East China is the worst on earth – perhaps this has something to do with how sun hrs is calculated there? Dadh’s comments (above) are insightful - I would have fully expected it to be dry and sunny in Hong Kong in fall and winter (yet I would have thought more like Oct – March, than Oct – Dec as dadh tells us above). It’s informative to when you have someone who has lived in a climate long enough to give you the insight into its true character. Still, I’m no less shocked at Hong Kong’s numbers.
Moving north into the eastern Temperate zones of East Asia (Dca/Dcb)…the sun hours (2500/2600 hrs/annually) at stations like Beijing, Qingdao, Busan(Pusan), are actually very close to the sun hrs of stations in the eastern temperate zone of the USA (cities NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore…etc). So there is little difference between the far eastern seaboard cities of East Asia and the middle East Coast of the USA . I expected sun hrs to go down as you get into the higher latitudes of northeast Asia and get closer to the cold season polar lows…so stations like Seoul and Sapporo (1700 – 2100 hrs/ann), are the equivalent of heading above NYC into the New England states and Canadian Maritimes.
As to the point you’re trying to make (if I understand you correctly) – that Seattle, is not as gloomy as it’s sun hrs makes it seem…perhaps we misunderstood the point each of us was trying to make (lol). I agree, Seattle is not the most sun starved city/region on earth of course. My point was more one of the differecnce in climate zones and climate genetics; as a rule, Temperate Oceanic climates are cloudy/have low sun hours….and Humid Subtropical climates are sunny/have high sun hours. True, the USA and Australian humid subtropical climates are unusually sunny (and your data from the Cfa stations in East Asia certainly reminds me of that!). However, there might be something to be said for subtropical East Asia being unusually cloudy for its climate type as well perhaps? For example Buenos Aires near 32 S – a very typical Cfa climate in South America, gets about 2543 hrs of sun annually – still more than 500 hrs annually than Seattle. That was kind of my point I guess - you can't expect to compare sun hrs in Do zones and Cfa zones.
Moving north into the eastern Temperate zones of East Asia (Dca/Dcb)…the sun hours (2500/2600 hrs/annually) at stations like Beijing, Qingdao, Busan(Pusan), are actually very close to the sun hrs of stations in the eastern temperate zone of the USA (cities NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore…etc). So there is little difference between the far eastern seaboard cities of East Asia and the middle East Coast of the USA . I expected sun hrs to go down as you get into the higher latitudes of northeast Asia and get closer to the cold season polar lows…so stations like Seoul and Sapporo (1700 – 2100 hrs/ann), are the equivalent of heading above NYC into the New England states and Canadian Maritimes.
Something I notice strongly in the Far East is that there seems to be a much greater difference between inland and coastal climates than in North America. Compare these, all around 43 north:
Though this is just an aside, looking through China's weather has kind of convinced me that in China it's better to like year-round warmth OR sunshine: there isn't a place with much of both.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wavehunter007
As to the point you’re trying to make (if I understand you correctly) – that Seattle, is not as gloomy as it’s sun hrs makes it seem…perhaps we misunderstood the point each of us was trying to make (lol)..
If I had a point on that other thread ( this one was genuinely started in the spirit of sun versus gloom ) it was that Seattle wasn't an extreme climate in terms of rainfall totals or lack of sun. There are cloudier deserts, tropical forests, subtropics, really, almost every type of climate out there that has a representative cloudier than Seattle, and Seattle itself is far from being the worst in its climate category. People visiting or living in Seattle often describe it as some supernatural vortex of cloud, and it's just not that special or even noteworthy outside of a reference to the continental US. Rainfall is pretty standard for a climate of its type, too.
Yet, just go north of the Argentina and Uruguay area, and sunshine totals go down again. While not as low on the whole as East Asia, much of Brazil is variably sunny at best, including gloom spots like these:
If I had a point on that other thread ( this one was genuinely started in the spirit of sun versus gloom ) it was that Seattle wasn't an extreme climate in terms of rainfall totals or lack of sun. There are cloudier deserts, tropical forests, subtropics, really, almost every type of climate out there that has a representative cloudier than Seattle, and Seattle itself is far from being the worst in its climate category. People visiting or living in Seattle often describe it as some supernatural vortex of cloud, and it's just not that special or even noteworthy outside of a reference to the continental US. Rainfall is pretty standard for a climate of its type, too.
I was trying to argue a similar point. Seattle only looks bad when you compare it much of the USA, and once you compare it to the northern parts of the Northeast, it's not too much worse. Compare it to Eastern or Atlantic Canada at a similar latitude and Seattle likely comes out better (Nova Scotia & Newfoundland) or no worse (Ontario and Quebec).
As temperate oceanic climates go, Seattle is at the high end of sunshine. Hmm. This might be true as well "as Mediterranean Climates go, California is near the high of sunshine".
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
