Why do some countries have different climatic conditions?

Answer 1

An area's climate depends mostly on its latitude and its proximity to an ocean or very large sea.

Because the earth's axis of rotation always seems to point to the same distant stars throughout its annual orbit, the angle at which the sun's rays hit a certain latitude is the same at a certain time of a certain day of every year (give or take about a day due to calendar limitations). For example the maximum angle between the earth's surface at the equator and the direction of sunshine, or the angle between the earth's surface at the point where the equator is closest to the sun and the direction of sunshine, is always 90° at the equinoxes. The amount of energy reaching a certain area from a radiant energy source mostly depends on the distance between them, but it also depends on the angle at which the energy is hitting the area. To illustrate, suppose Board A is directly facing the sun and Board B has a 1' square hole cut in it and is between Board A and the sun and parallel to Board A. You would then have a 1' square of sunlight on Board A. If you then tilt Board A 60° away from the sun/ Board B, you would have a 1' by 2' rectangle of sunlight on Board A. Since the same amount of energy is passing through the hole, but it is reaching an area twice as large as before, half as much energy is reaching the original square foot on Board A due to the tilt.

At any latitude in the tropical zone, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, the sun is directly overhead twice per year. At the equator, the sun is never lower than 66.56° above the horizon at local apparent solar noon. At the poles, the sun is never more than 23.44° above the horizon, ever. The greatest angle between the horizon and the sun at a certain latitude outside the tropical zone is about 113.44° minus the latitude, so the farther you are from the equator, the less average solar energy per unit of area you receive. That's why tropics are hot and poles are cold.

Proximity to an ocean greatly affects climate as well due to water's ability to store heat. When a certain amount of heat is applied to a certain volume of water, its temperature increase is less than the temperature increase of the same volume of any other substance with the same amount of heat applied, assuming the substances are neither melting nor boiling (at the opposite end of the scale is silver; it takes only 22% as much heat to raise the temperature of a given volume of silver by a certain number of degrees than it takes to raise the temperature of the same volume of water by the same number of degrees). The oceans absorb heat during the day and release it at night, causing the difference between the daily high and low temperatures of places near an ocean to be much less than the difference between the daily high and low temperatures of places further inland. Also, ocean currents flowing away from the equator cause the average temperatures of nearby places to be a little higher, and ocean currents flowing toward the equator cause nearby average temperatures to be a little lower.