Meteorological Analysis of the Influence of Geographic Latitude on Temperature Distribution Across Two Continents

Abstract

The key premise of this study is to examine whether sun radiation and thus latitude are the main drivers of climate for the same latitude. Although the climate is shaped by multiple factors, the sunlight is regarded as a major factor and we tried to test if stations at the same latitude located at different parts of the globe show overall similarity in their climates.  We found out that meteorological stations located at identical latitudes but in different geographical regions exhibit similar long-term temperature trends. Annual temperature data from seven stations in Azerbaijan and seven in the United States for the years 1992 and 2014 were analyzed. Differences between the two years were compared to determine whether temperature anomalies align across similar latitudes. Results show a moderate positive correlation among long-term temperature means of paired stations, confirming that latitude plays a meaningful role in shaping temperature distribution. However, despite that altitude showed itself as one of the major factors explaining temperature deviations between stations. Shorter time horizons (annual series) displayed weak correlations, revealing that latitude-driven temperature similarity is mostly detectable only at multi-decadal scales.