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Map of Canadas climate...There's no one
Canadas climate
as we have a few...
"Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average weather, or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. What does it mean? Anyone's including Canadas climate describes the possible and expected weather for a part of the world, for a given time of year, without the benefit of a weather forecast. What you might anticipate if you were planning to come to Canada at a certain time next year, for instance. A detailed description would let you know what temperatures you might see, any rain, strong wind or snow on the ground. The first item to note is that Canada is one of the largest countries in the world. It spans more than four time zones and has land lying from temperate mid-latitudes in its southern border far enough northward to include land surface at greater than 80°N latitude. That means Canadas climate has many unique components. Several areas, each dominated by its own large influences, such as
One thing that governs Canada's current weather is the so-called air mass affecting a particular region at any given time. Canadas climate experiences the influences of several of these simultaneously. They have names such as maritime-tropical, continental-polar, arctic and so forth, and define the temperature (generalized by the second word in each two-word phrase) and humidity characteristics of a large blob of air over any portion of the earth's surface. Though they move around, many display quasi-permanent qualities (moving, but not too far) for a significant part of each year. This certainly affects regional climates as well and helps define Canadas climate.
So we know Canada has several climates. Let's look at them by Koppen Climate Classification, an elementary system which draws climatic conclusions by vegetation type and amount. In the southwest city of Vancouver, The f means no real dry season and the small b means comfortable temperatures in the summer (around 20°C). Here we have the mildest portion of Canadas climate. The rest of southern British Columbia, east of Vancouver is high mountains with their polar type of climate, called Highland H. This is interspersed with deep, often dry, valleys. The cities of Kelowna and Kamloops, for instance, have Koppen Dfb climates where the D characterizes dry continental conditions: much less precipitation, big day/night and summer/winter temperature differences. The valleys may include some Bsk, scattered throughout. As you travel eastward, out of the mountains, and remain near the US border, you encounter a large sweeping area of Dfb climates great summers for agriculture, some rain but not too much, and cold dry white winters. This area, especially Palliser's Triangle, is often influenced by the hot US deserts due south of here. It stretches from Calgary climate area into southern Saskatchewan, with the warmest and driest of Canadas climate extremes approaching Bsk (semi-arid grassland steppe: Medicine Hat, Regina) in this region. To the north and east of this is a cooler, slightly more moist band of Dfb, which includes the humid continental major cities of Edmonton and Winnipeg. North of that is the Boreal Forest in its Dfc climate - short summers and severe winters. Now for the largest area of Canadas climate. Generally, northern BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec (The Canadian Shield) as well as parts of Labrador, southern Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut has been assigned the code Dfc (I think it means "Darn friggin' cold!"). It has arctic climates further north classified as ET, tundra. Permanent ice caps, coded EF, occur on Canadian land in glaciers only rather than large sheets like those in Greenland, the Arctic Ocean surface and Antarctica. Now let's move into the southeastern part of Canada. Surrounding Toronto, the most heavily populated tract with the warmest example of Canadas climate gets the nickname the golden horseshoe. It has some spots with a Dfa climate, especially down south near Lake Erie west to Windsor. This climate has very warm summers and shorter cold winters. The remainder of southern Ontario including Ottawa is Dfb with Dfc in the north. The Dfb extends eastward into Montreal and beyond along the St. Lawrence River and through Halifax and all the maritime provinces. Here, it is humid with warm summers and cold winters. Here's how to get detailed Canadas climate information from Environment Canada, enter the name of your city in the second blank on this page. After that, you get expected normal weather conditions for every month and some sense of the variability for that area.
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