Humid continental climate
A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900,[1] typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold (sometimes severely cold in the northern areas) and snowy winters.
Humid continental climates are generally found between latitudes 40° N and 60° N,[3] within the central and northeastern portions of North America, Europe, and Asia.
They are rare in the Southern Hemisphere, limited to isolated high altitude locations, due to the larger ocean area at that latitude, smaller land mass, and the consequent greater maritime moderation.
In the Northern Hemisphere, some of the humid continental climates, typically in around Hokkaido, Sakhalin Island, northeastern mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland are closer to the sea and heavily maritime-influenced and comparable to oceanic climates, with relatively cool summers, significant year-round precipitation (including high amounts of snow) and winters being just below the freezing mark (too cold for such a classification).
A more moderate variety, found in places like Honshu, east-central China, the Korean Peninsula, parts of Eastern Europe, parts of southern Ontario, much of the American Midwest, and the Northeast US, the climate combines hotter summer maxima and greater humidity (similar to those found in adjacent humid subtropical climates) and moderately cold winters and more intermittent snow cover (averaging somewhat below freezing, too cold for a more temperate classification), and is less extreme than the most inland hyper-continental variety.
[9] Snowfall occurs in all areas with a humid continental climate and in many such places is more common than rain during the height of winter.
Most summer rainfall occurs during thunderstorms,[6] and in North America and Asia an occasional tropical cyclone (or the remnants thereof).
[6] Within North America, this climate includes portions of the central and eastern United States from east of 100°W to south of about the 44°N to the Atlantic.
In East Asia, this climate exhibits a monsoonal tendency with much higher precipitation in summer than in winter, and due to the effects of the strong Siberian High much colder winter temperatures than similar latitudes around the world, however with lower snowfall, the exception being western Japan with its heavy snowfall.
Much of central Asia, northwestern China, and southern Mongolia has a thermal regime similar to that of the Dfa climate type, but these regions receive so little precipitation that they are more often classified as steppes (BSk) or deserts (BWk).
This climate zone does not exist at all in the Southern Hemisphere, where the continents either do not penetrate low enough in latitude or taper too much to have any place that gets the combination of snowy winters and hot summers.
[21] High-altitude locations such as Flagstaff, Arizona, Aspen, Colorado and Los Alamos, New Mexico in the western United States exhibit local Dfb climates.
The south-central and southwestern Prairie Provinces also fits the Dfb criteria from a thermal profile, but because of semi-arid precipitation portions of it are grouped into the BSk category.
[22] In Europe, it is found in much of Central Europe: Germany (in the east and southeast part of the country), Austria (generally below 700 m (2,297 ft)), Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary (generally above 100 m (328 ft)), Croatia (mostly Slavonia region), in much of Eastern Europe: Ukraine (the whole country except the Black Sea coast), Belarus, Russia (mostly central part of European Russia), south and central parts of the Nordic countries not bathed by the Atlantic Ocean or North Sea: Sweden (historical regions of Svealand and Götaland), Denmark, Finland (south end, including the three largest cities),[13] Norway (most populated area),[5] all Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and also in parts of: Romania (generally above 100 m (328 ft)), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey and in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland, (generally above 100 m (328 ft)).
