The Changefulness of Temperature as an Element of Climate

Abstract

ONE of the features in which the climates of great continents most contrast with those of oceanic islands, and those of higher latitudes with the climates of the tropics, is the greater range through which the temperature varies between night and day, and between winter and summer. Another, perhaps not less important, is the greater changefulness of the temperature from day to day. Both of these are comprised under the general expression variability of temperature,¹ and they are similar in their effects on living organisms, but they depend on very different causes, and in their local association are often manifested in very different degrees; places with a great annual and diurnal range of temperature, displaying great constancy of climate at any given season of the year, while others, at which the former variations are moderate in amount, are, nevertheless, subject to irregular vicissitudes of considerable magnitnde. The Punjab and Sind may be cited as examples of the former class, Western and Central Europe of the latter.