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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tom77falcons
Wiki gives Chicago more sun hours than Philadelphia, yet NOAA lists Chicago as having less % possible than Philadelphia (54% vs. 56%). So, maybe Chicago is more like 2400 hours or so.
On the other hand, the Aus BOM lists Sydney has having around 2550 if you average between the airport and observatory. There is a big diff though in that Sydney is sunnier in winter, while Chicago has low hours in winter and much higher than Sydney in summer.
I prefer more sun in summer. NOAA gives Chicago 67%, 66%, and 62% for June, July and August (higher than where I am). So while Sydney has nowhere near 70% in summer, Chicago actually does.
In fact, 220 hours (Sydney in January) is actually pretty poor by American standards for summer. I think most Americans would be floored that Sydney is apparently that cloudy in summer. 7.1 means hours of sun per day in Jan with 14 hour days =51%. Not many places in the US average that low in summer.
I never knew Sydney was so cloudy in summer. As someone said before, Sydney does a great marketing job as all the pics show Sydney with nothing but blue skies around that opera house.
Yeah Sydney certainly can feel cloudy in summer. Winter, by contrast, feels pretty sunny to me.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,081,790 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by nei
I don't really know what the regimes in Australia are.
In all the climates I'm familiar with, summer is sunnier than winter. It just seems logical to me. Summer brings warmer temperatures and higher sun angles, burning away the clouds. And the weather tends to be more stable and less cyclonic.
I know East Asia has fairly cloudy summers, but its summers are also far wetter than the rest of the year.
Although I grew up in a Med climate so naturally associated rain with winter, when I had a look at climatic zones around the world it was obvious that the warmer months tend to be the wettest in most climate zones of the world. In fact climates with a strong winter maximum seem restricted to Mediterranean climates and some temperate maritime climates (if you count places like Seattle or Vancouver) and some tropical climates, like in Hawaii and parts of Vietnam. All other places either have a summer maximum, a maximum at other times of the year or pretty even distribution throughout the year.
I also assumed that cloud naturally went with rain, and that in most of the world summer was actually the cloudier season. Now I realise it's not that simple, and even climates with strong summer maximums can have just as much or even more cloud than in summer. Monsoonal climates and many continental climates, however, do indeed have a strong summer cloudiness maximum, or a maximum outside of winter.
Researching the US, however, I noticed alot of the hinterland of the US was actually pretty gloomy in winter. Especially the Great Lakes and even swathes of the South like West Virginia and the Appalachians. NYC, Boston and the Atlantic coast seems brighter in winter than inland parts of the US. The only parts of the US with a noticeable summer cloudiness maximum seem to be Florida. The Gulf Coast always seemed odd to me as a sub-tropical climate which is just as wet in winter as summer. Much of the Great Plains has somewhat sunny winters.
I think you probably come from a pretty US-based perspective. Australia is centered more in the tropics, so summer tends to be the wettest and cloudiest season over most of the East coast and inland areas. Look at the stats for the East coast and you'll see a pretty strong warm season cloudiness maximum in most areas north of Sydney. Sydney itself is pretty cloudy in Autumn and early winter though. The south coast from Gippsland all the way to say Shark Bay has more cloudy winters due to the mid-latitudinal systems that bring winter cloud to much of the US. By the time you get into Tassie, however, summer becomes very cloudy again. In Invercargill summer is the wettest season and persistent cloud is the rule all year round.
Hobart's record low is only -2.8C. Some locations in NZ like Kaikoura have record lows of like -1C. Maatsuyker Island is like -0.6C and that's right at the bottom of Tasmania. Extremely maritime climates.
The record low for Albany Town on the coast is a pretty absurd 2.1C (it's 35'S): Broome, like 2500 km to the north, has reported 3.2C and if stats are to believed Kalumburu even further north near the coast has got down to 0.6C but I'm skeptical. That's like somewhere like Ottawa having the same record low as Miami.
Yeah I always found it odd how even some tropical/subtropical locations can have record lows that are close to or in even some cases lower than the temperate locations.
I think this must have to do with Australia's latitudinal spread in that the bulk of land is in the subtropics with rather large diurnal ranges due to the mostly persistent high pressure and the southern part of the country faces very maritime influences with nothing but 4,000km of ocean between it and Antarctica.
I guess that's why Australia to me is the lucky country... you have so much land at just the right latitude.. you never have to worry about getting ridiculous cold snaps no matter where you are
I guess that's why Australia to me is the lucky country... you have so much land at just the right latitude.. you never have to worry about getting ridiculous cold snaps no matter where you are
But then they have to worry about the fact that 90% of Australia is either too dry, or rainfall is too unreliable. Australians come from a people that don't have thousands of years of experience living in arid and semi-arid conditions unlike the Spanish, Mexicans, northern Africans, and Arabs
But then they have to worry about the fact that 90% of Australia is either too dry, or rainfall is too unreliable. Australians come from a people that don't have thousands of years of experience living in arid and semi-arid conditions unlike the Spanish, Mexicans, northern Africans, and Arabs
True... Australia is the 2nd driest continent after Antarctica but Australians seem to have adapted well to this. They are very conscious of their water usage there unlike here in Canada where we tend to waste a lot of water.
Although I grew up in a Med climate so naturally associated rain with winter, when I had a look at climatic zones around the world it was obvious that the warmer months tend to be the wettest in most climate zones of the world. In fact climates with a strong winter maximum seem restricted to Mediterranean climates and some temperate maritime climates (if you count places like Seattle or Vancouver) and some tropical climates, like in Hawaii and parts of Vietnam. All other places either have a summer maximum, a maximum at other times of the year or pretty even distribution throughout the year.
I also assumed that cloud naturally went with rain, and that in most of the world summer was actually the cloudier season. Now I realise it's not that simple, and even climates with strong summer maximums can have just as much or even more cloud than in summer. Monsoonal climates and many continental climates, however, do indeed have a strong summer cloudiness maximum, or a maximum outside of winter.
Researching the US, however, I noticed alot of the hinterland of the US was actually pretty gloomy in winter. Especially the Great Lakes and even swathes of the South like West Virginia and the Appalachians. NYC, Boston and the Atlantic coast seems brighter in winter than inland parts of the US. The only parts of the US with a noticeable summer cloudiness maximum seem to be Florida. The Gulf Coast always seemed odd to me as a sub-tropical climate which is just as wet in winter as summer. Much of the Great Plains has somewhat sunny winters.
I think you probably come from a pretty US-based perspective. Australia is centered more in the tropics, so summer tends to be the wettest and cloudiest season over most of the East coast and inland areas. Look at the stats for the East coast and you'll see a pretty strong warm season cloudiness maximum in most areas north of Sydney. Sydney itself is pretty cloudy in Autumn and early winter though. The south coast from Gippsland all the way to say Shark Bay has more cloudy winters due to the mid-latitudinal systems that bring winter cloud to much of the US. By the time you get into Tassie, however, summer becomes very cloudy again. In Invercargill summer is the wettest season and persistent cloud is the rule all year round.
Interesting, but you're not correct about Invercargill - the rainfall profile and sunshine distribution at Invercargill and on the southern plain generally is however different from the rest of NZ. The wettest 3-month period is April-June, the driest is Jul-Sept. Summer is nearer the top end but December and February are both drier than any of April, May or June.
For % sunshine, there is a marked drop from a Feb max to a May-June minimum and a quick rise to August. Sept-Jan all have a similar rating to August. As I've indicated in older posts, the rainfall and sunshine regimes in the South Island are complicated by topography. Every 3-month season is represented somewhere in both maximum and minimum rainfall values, and sunshine is also complicated.
The North Island mainly follows a simpler pattern, at least in the west where summer is driest and sunniest and winter wettest and cloudiest.
Further south at Campbell Island a summer-winter max-min is strongly re-established - summer months (% wise) are 3-4 times better than gloomy June.
The only parts of the US with a noticeable summer cloudiness maximum seem to be Florida. .
Note however San Diego where Dec-Feb has almost 7% more of the possible than June-Aug (on a list of 170+ stations, that was the only one that stood out for mainland US).
True... Australia is the 2nd driest continent after Antarctica but Australians seem to have adapted well to this. They are very conscious of their water usage there unlike here in Canada where we tend to waste a lot of water.
From being in this forum for a while, I've been surprised how wet Australian cities are. My image of Australia was a place that is nearly desert.
It seems while most Australia is very dry, most Australians are concentrated in the wetter portions.
So while I have no doubt that there is some error to all sun data...I think it is fair to say the NWS sun hr data collected from 1961 – 1990/and the sun maps final updates in August 1989 before AOS took over are fairly accurate. Additionally, I have seen a few thermal pictures (today modern research academics/advanced professionals in climate almost universally use thermal imaging data(color shaded algorithms ) to examine climate elements)...and noticed that the 4000 hrs a year that Yuma was calculated to have by NWS in the their 30 year data set, was quite close to the 3850 hrs that space based thermal senses generated. I think this is solid testment to the 1961 – 1990 data sun hr set that NOAA/NWS generated back then.
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Just following up this idea of inconsistent measurement methods from what I'm reading in this thread, I do wonder if the correction factor is needed, would the world record for Yuma risk being threatened by anywhere else?
From being in this forum for a while, I've been surprised how wet Australian cities are. My image of Australia was a place that is nearly desert.
It seems while most Australia is very dry, most Australians are concentrated in the wetter portions.
Yep, which is why I said that most Australians live in what I call the outlined portion of the country in the coastal peripheries. 40% of the interior is too arid to sustain anything larger than a small village of a few hundred people, the other 50% has erratic rainfall patterns in which the 30 or so inches of rain it gets falls on some years, and other years produce very significant droughts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by deneb78
True... Australia is the 2nd driest continent after Antarctica but Australians seem to have adapted well to this. They are very conscious of their water usage there unlike here in Canada where we tend to waste a lot of water.
We have this problem in the U.S. as well. Lots of snowbirds from the northeast and Canada move to Florida and the desert southwest to escape the winter, and then those HOAs, created and staffed by northerner developers, demand green lawns that goes against the native conditions and plants. This is why Texas and Arizona (even Florida with dried up grass from the north) have significant water problems that the Mexicans don't seem to have. Most of the newcomers move into developments that want to maintain the same appearance of big, leafy trees and grassy lawns that the north and east have, that didn't exist prior.
Yeah, I think Australians have adapted to the local conditions, but certainly most of the newcomers don't seem to have a clue yet.
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