I have decided to set up a climate battle between two interesting monsoonal climates I've created: the Tegri Plateau and the city of Tutankhamen. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages, for both heat and cold lovers.
The Tegri Plateau is a cool to cold monsoon climate. Winters are cold and bone-dry. Very little snow is present during the actual winter months. However, as temperatures warm in Spring, heavy amounts of precipitation fall, bringing the first significant snows in March and crushing amounts of snowfall in April and May. The monsoon strengthens in Summer, and the last big snows fall in June. June and July each feature over 30 inches of rain, as well as negligible sunshine. The monsoon lessens as summer ends, and the daily range widens, creating a strange stagnation in daily highs between August and September. Rain and snow taper off rapidly in September.
Rain is concentrated in the monsoon, and Tegri features the higher annual precipitation. However, there is a long stretch of dry and sunny months in the Tegri Plateau, though most of them are cold. These months constitute most of the respectable annual sunshine average of 2500 hours.
Its competitor is another city called Tutankhamen. Tutankhamen features a lower precipitation figure than the Tegri Plateau, but it is spread out more over the course of the year. Consequently there are more precipitation days. There is also very cloudy weather throughout this period, and 8 months of the year are cloudy, averaging under 100 sunshine hours. It is also very cold in the winter, averaging well below zero for both highs and lows. It also stays cold for long in this climate, which leads to a huge snowfall figure of 553 inches per year, which snowier than Tegri has ever been, both annually and in winter. Winters in Tutankhamen feature very deep snow, as opposed to Tegri Plateau's bare ground. Although precipitation increases sharply, reaching a maximum in August, the wetness or cloudiness here never reaches Tegri's extreme levels, though it does drag out for longer. The monsoonal conditions in Tutankhamen are centered around winter, not summer, and thus precipitation drops off sharply here at the same time Tegri's monsoon is gearing up. This leads to more rapid warming and clearing of the skies in April and May. Summers are overall warmer in Tutankhamen than Tegri, with July averaging 20C for the high, but also featuring chillier lows than Tegri. Summer here is bone-dry and features abundant sunshine. July in Tutankhamen is sunnier than any month in Tegri, and May and June fall just short of Tegri's sunshine peak in autumn. Tutankhamen's Summer is short-lived, though, with late July and August featuring rapid cooling as the monsoon hits. As a consequence of this long cloudy period, Tutankhamen features low sunshine hours, averaging 1600 hours annually.
To a lot of people, these climates each have advantages over each other in terms of their characteristics, and this will present an interesting choice to everyone, even those who would give an F to both of these places. These climates may not be especially realistic, especially Tutankhamen, but they are designed to be interesting combatants for this climate battle.
Tegri Plateau's Koeppen type is
Dwc, which is a monsoon-influenced subarctic climate. Tegri falls a few degrees short of being classified as a tundra climate, and in any case Tegri Plateau is marginal for tree growth. The Trewartha type for Tegri Plateau is
E, which is also a subarctic classification.
Tutankhamen's Koeppen type is
Dsc, which is a subarctic climate with a summer dry season (or a Mediterranean precipitation pattern). This place isn't marginal for tree growth, but remarkably, the levels of cold in winter approach levels that would classify it as a Dsd climate (7F warmer than the -36F threshold). The Trewartha type is once again
E.
For me this is a choice that required some thought, since both have appealing and unappealing features and both would be interesting to experience. I decided upon
Tutankhamen. Even though it is too cold in winter, its extreme snowfall beats out Tegri Plateau's bare winters. It also has warmer summers that are more to my liking. Summers in Tutankhamen would be far too sunny, but the low annual figure and many cloudy months vault it over Tegri's non-extreme but still very sunny period that go on for longer.
Now that I've cast the first vote, which one will you choose?
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
