Paul Beckwith

More coming from Paul Beckwith

Here are his comments as to why the comparatively cool weather in NZ differs from that of our Australian cousins:

"The prevailing jets bend downward parallel to the southern Australian coastline away from the high pressure block caused by southern Australian high temperatures. This kind of protects New Zealand from storms and high winds. Rather nice of the Australians. The sea surface temperature is lower on the leeward side of Australia since the Coriolis force pushes surface waters to the left and thus northward between Oz and NZ. This draws cooler waters at lower latitudes up and around NZ keeping temperatures decent. Just made this all up, but it makes good physical sense to me"

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Southern Hemisphere Climate Changes

I explain how declining Arctic sea ice is causing Australia to bake and Antarctic sea ice to grow. Animations used are Southern Hemisphere temperature anomalies, temperatures, jet steams, sea surface temperature and precipitation.