[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
Think about really really cold places on earth, where maybe it gets a bit warmer during the summer months, but not significantly so - pretty much its just always cold. Similarly with very hot places - seasonal variation is nowhere near as pronounced as in temperate regions.

Um. Like Antarctica? It is cold there in the summer, but planes can land and people can go outside. In the winter, all travel is ceased, people stay inside their little reseach compound, and virtually all of the scientists leave. The pack-ice forms (ocean water actually freezes). Antarctica in the summer is completely different than in winter... the closer you get to the poles, the greater the seasonal variance is.

This is true in hot places too. There's a city in Siberia that gets up to 90F in the summer and -90F in the winter. And deserts like California's Death Valley are very hot in the summer - usually the hottest place in the US, often over 120F - and cold in the winter. Death Valley's records are 134F in July and 15F in January, while the average daily high and low for those months are 115F and 39F.

So, I hate to say it... but you're absolutely wrong, in this case. Seasonal variation is weak at the equator, which is mostly warm and often humid (I've lived at the equator for a couple years). The main equatorial seasonal variance seems to be rainfall (monsoon or non-monsoon). But places that are very hot or very cold almost universally have extreme seasonal temperature variations.

-Cherry

P.S. Death Valley weather: http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/usgsnps/deva/weather.html

[ October 21, 2003, 21:13: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]