Why is southern hemisphere warmer

Sign in or register to comment. When I started reading this I thought it was going to give an answer to a question that had puzzled me. A couple of years ago I was in Tierra del Fuego. The latitude south was about the same as that of Galloway is north; and it was late March, the equivalent of late September in the northern hemisphere. Yet when Dumfries would have been enjoying its usual early autumn warm spell, and when both towns were subject to the general oceanic warming effect, Ushuaia was bitterly cold with frequent snow showers which lay on the mountains down to about 50 metres.

Could this difference really be all down to the North Atlantic Drift? It seems that perhaps the answer is yes, after all. Complain about this comment Comment number 1. This entry is now closed for comments.

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Check the latest forecast. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. The Earth is at perihelion around 3 January and at aphelion around 3 July. The heat retained in the southern hemisphere oceans makes the average temperature of the Earth a few degrees higher in July when Earth is furthest from the Sun than it is in January when it is its closest.

Why is the southern hemisphere warmer than the northern? Phillip E. Jan 27, Explanation: Water has a high specific heat capacity so it loses heat slowly. Related questions What's the Earth's "absolute" speed? How does density affect earth's layers?

How fast does the earth rotate? In March the WMO confirmed that was the second warmest year on record, with a global average temperature that was 1. Since the s each decade has been warmer than the previous one, the WMO noted, adding that retreating ice, record sea levels, increasing ocean heat and acidification and extreme weather combine to have major impacts on the health and well-being of both humans and the environment.

The problem affects world socio-economic development, causing migration and food insecurity in terrestrial and marine ecosystems. In , countries signed up to greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in the Paris Agreement and promised to limit global warming to between 1. These promises have not been kept. There was practically no external impact on vegetation in the mid-Pliocene, when the Amazon rainforest was much larger, generating more moisture and helping to offset the drier climate in the region, he added.

Future droughts will be worse if deforestation and burning continue at the present rate.