Latitude and high mountains are not the cause of cold weather. I think the cause is God. I am in Uster which is Switzerland right now and it should be cold in April but guess what? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! To my surprise, for 12 days it was hot almost like in Israeli summer and we had no rain! Not even one drop. Someone must have stopped the rain and brought hot sunny weather! And the only person who can do that is God. Check out this cool song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdzqIEYjx8k
Switzerland is mountainous - mountains are high = nearer the sun. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! God has nothing to do with it.
According to this logic, the air must be cold high in the Swiss mountains because there is less air to hold heat. But guess what? The air was hot up there. The rational explanation is that God has everything to do with it. How else would you explain paranormal events like no rain in Switzerland for 12 days plus very hot weather in Uster and Zurich in the middle of April?
I didn't mention air. But you're wrong - fewer people live in the mountains than live at or near sea level: since there are fewer people to breath the air and use it up there must be more air at high altitudes. Paranormal? PARANORMAL?? The Swiss export their rain to the UK where it is used to keep the population happy. I remember the "Big Bright Thing in the Sky" riots in '78 when the rain lessened so much that a strange light circular object was seen in the sky and triggered a new religious cult.
Nope: the real point is that you seem to grasp at the description "paranormal" for a natural occurrence. 12 days without rain is paranormal? Based on what? The UK has a reputation for being rain-sodden and it's not unheard of even here to go that long without rain.
It's not only the lack of rain. It's the high temperature (even in the Swiss mountains) AND the lack of rain for 12 days which I think it's quite paranormal for northern Switzerland.
You think it's paranormal? I don't suppose you've ever bothered to check historical (or even predicted) weather in the area? And when you say "Northern Switzerland" exactly how much of Northern Switzerland are we talking about? The Northern 50% of the country? Or a couple of tens of square kilometres? The last time I was in the Alps (not too far from Aix-les-Bains, France) there was thick snow on the ground while even the Italian delegates to the conference were saying how hot it was.
Mongolia is at latitude around 40-50, but colder than Moscow. In January average would be between -20 and -25. Average temp in January in Ulan Bator is like -20, and the population is over a million. I read here Ulan Bator is the coldest national capital in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulan_Bator#Geography_and_Climate
No no. This is the Coriolis force at work. Ocean currents in the Northern Hemisphere rotate clockwise. So if you live on the western shore of a northern ocean (Boston, Miami, Vladivostok, Tokyo), you've got warm seawater that's rotated up from the tropics, and the winds that blow across it are warm. If you live on the eastern shore of a northern ocean (Lisbon, Bristol, Los Angeles, Vancouver), you've got cold seawater that's rotated down from the Arctic, and the winds that blow across it are cool. Summer evening breezes off the Atlantic in Florida are hot. Summer evening breezes off the Pacific in California are mild. Nobody drives around Los Angeles on a summer night in a convertible with the top down, but everybody does it in Miami.
True climate is a complex system influenced by many factors but I think that on average places in higher latitude tend to be cooler throughout the year than places in lower latitude but again, just on average. That means that Zurich is on average cooler than Haifa and Toronto and Ushuaia in southern Argentina is on average cooler than Zurich. On the equator the temperature is more or less the same throughout the year but there is a dry season and wet season. I also want to add that there are variations in the solar output (called solar variation) so the sun could be hotter at times. Also the sky in many places in the world is covered by clouds for most of the year so these places tend to be much cooler than places where there are rarely any clouds like in the Sahara desert for example.