{"id":23882,"date":"2025-12-02T09:49:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.geocurrents.info\/?p=23882"},"modified":"2025-12-02T09:49:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:49:28","slug":"avoiding-misinformation-when-teaching-the-geography-of-climate-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geocurrents.info\/blog\/2025\/12\/02\/avoiding-misinformation-when-teaching-the-geography-of-climate-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding Misinformation When Teaching the Geography of Climate, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

As earlier GeoCurrents<\/em> posts in the current series on educational geography have noted, sun angles, which are determined by latitude, play a huge role in shaping the geography of climate. Simply put, the lower the latitude of any given location, the more solar radiation it will receive and the warmer it will be. Historically, latitude has been considered the prime determinant of climate. It often still is.<\/p>\n

The actual situation, however, is far more complicated. Climate is not just a matter of average temperatures, nor are average temperatures just a matter of latitude. Even equatorial locations can have cool climates if they sit at high elevations; Quito, Ecuador, at 0\u00b0 latitude and an altitude of 9,350 ft (2,850 m), has a mild annual daily mean temperature of 60.1\u00b0 F (15.6\u00b0 C). And even tropical lowland areas can have seemingly non-tropical climates. Consider, for example, the coastal city of Lima, Peru, which, at 12\u00b0 S, is well within the tropics. Yet in December, a month with high sun angles, Lima\u2019s mean daily maximum temperature is only 74.9\u00b0 F (24.4\u00b0 C), and in August it is only 66.6\u00b0 F (19.2\u00b0 C). Unlike most tropical locations, moreover, Lima receives very little rainfall and has nothing that even approaches a rainy season. In August, the city\u2019s \u201cwettest\u201d month, average precipitation is a meager 0.06 inches (1.5 mm). But despite its extreme aridity, with only 0.25 inches (6.4 mm) of rain annually, Lima remains humid throughout the year. In its driest months (December-January), the average relative humidity is 81%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Climate Table of Quito, Ecuador<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Climate Table for Lima, Peru<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Lima owes its mild temperatures, lack of precipitation, and humid air to the cold Humboldt Current<\/a> that courses off its coast. Besides latitude, altitude and proximity to ocean currents are thus key influences on the geography of climate. But they are still not the only ones. Other important considerations include location relative to mountain ranges and prevailing winds, and position within continental landmasses (coastal vs. interior and west coast vs. east coast). These factors will be explored in later posts. For now, I will remain focused on the understandable but simplistic notion that latitude alone determines climate.<\/p>\n

Equating climate with latitude with goes back to the ancient Greeks, whose geographical knowledge was largely restricted to the greater Mediterranean world. The term \u201cclimate\u201d derives from the Greek term klima, <\/em>which originally meant \u201cinclination\u201d or \u201cslope.\u201d Greek geographers divided the world into distinct bands called \u201cthe climes,\u201d<\/a> which were strictly defined by latitude, which in turn was defined by the seasonally changing inclination of the sun. In their simpler five-clime model*, used by Aristotle and others, a hot \u201ctorrid zone\u201d extended from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn. On either side of this tropical (or equatorial) swath lay two temperate belts, which extended to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Beyond the circles were the frigid, or arctic and Antarctic, zones. Most ancient Greek geographers agreed that only the temperate zone was inhabitable, as the torrid zone was too hot for human habitation and the arctic zone too cold. The existence of the vast torrid zone meant that the ecumene (or oikoumene<\/em>), the inhabited temperate portion of the world, was isolated from any possible human societies living in the southern temperate belt.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>
Aristotle’s Global Climate Model<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Ancient Greek climatic ideas were highly influential in ancient and medieval Europe, discouraging ventures into far northern and far southern lands. Eventually, however, the weight of empirical evidence crushed the authority of the classical texts. As Margaret Small explains in her 2020 book Framing the World: Classical Influence on Sixteenth-Century Geographical Thought<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

[This] chapter first examines how and why the Greeks and Romans developed the concept of uninhabitable frigid and torrid regions denoting the limits of the oikoumene [ecumene]. In the process it demonstrates why these climatic limits became conceptual margins that hindered exploration for nearly two thousand years. It looks at the reevaluation of authority which still saw the Greeks and Romans as the arbiters of knowledge, but enabled non-canonical classical authors to become important in revising attitudes to the climatic zones which had once been thought to define the edges of the oikoumene. In the new geography, the arctic and equatorial regions were believed to play key roles in allowing the different parts of the world to interact with one another. Without this shift in mind-set about the frigid and torrid zones, it would have been impossible for Europeans to begin to think of the world as a single, exploitable, global unit, created by God for human dominion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Margaret Small, Framing the World<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

The actual contours of global climate were gradually revealed during and after the sixteenth century, and the process was nearly completed with the pioneering research of geographer Alexander von Humboldt<\/a> (1769-1869). Unfortunately, however, the original latitude-focused model never disappeared in pedagogical circles. In preparing this post, I was surprised to find many educational climate maps that are not merely outdated but are filled with misinformation. Several of these maps will be examined in the next post.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 Ptolemy used additional lines of latitude to delineate seven climes, based on periods of daylight on the summer solstice. This scheme gained considerable importance in medieval Europe and in the Islamic realm.<\/p>\n

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As earlier GeoCurrents posts in the current series on educational geography have noted, sun angles, which are determined by latitude, play a huge role in shaping the geography of climate. Simply put, the lower the latitude of any given location, the more solar radiation it will receive and the warmer it will be. Historically, latitude […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":23885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4549,1825,4101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article-grid","category-environmental-geography","category-geographical-education"],"geo":null,"yoast_head":"\nAvoiding Misinformation When Teaching the Geography of Climate, Part 1 - GeoCurrents<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.geocurrents.info\/blog\/2025\/12\/02\/avoiding-misinformation-when-teaching-the-geography-of-climate-part-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Avoiding Misinformation When Teaching the Geography of Climate, Part 1 - GeoCurrents\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As earlier GeoCurrents posts in the current series on educational geography have noted, sun angles, which are determined by latitude, play a huge role in shaping the geography of climate. 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Lewis","author_link":"https:\/\/www.geocurrents.info\/blog\/author\/martin-lewis\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"As earlier GeoCurrents posts in the current series on educational geography have noted, sun angles, which are determined by latitude, play a huge role in shaping the geography of climate. Simply put, the lower the latitude of any given location, the more solar radiation it will receive and the warmer it will be. 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