Despite being separated by thousands of miles, there are many cities around the world with similar climates.
Researchers at SaveOnEnergy.com took an in-depth look at weather patterns across the globe to highlight the unexpected climate doppelgangers.
Los Angeles, for example, experiences a mild, temperate climate with a dry summer, much like some parts of southern Australia.
To discover cities with similar climates, researchers built a special tool that allowed them to choose a city of interest and compare it to other locations with similar climates.
Their interactive map, which is based on the Köppen climate classification, also shows major climate types around the world along with descriptive subtypes based on rainfall pattern.
The Köppen climate classification is widely used to classify the world’s climates and recognizes five major climatic types, including tropical, moist climates; dry climates; moist mid-latitude climates with mild winters; moist mid-latitude climates with cold winters and polar climates.
“We chose to look at the overall classification over the course of 100 years so we could use the locations' average climate over time,” said Eric Snapper, a project manager partnered with the SaveOnEnergy.com team.
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This interactive map allows users to enter an address or to click any location to discover places with similar climates. (Source: SaveOnEnergy.com)
“We chose to highlight pairings with fairly substantial geographic separation to show that even with being so far apart, these locations share something in common,” Snapper said.
However similar the weather patterns might be for certain cities, the Northern and Southern hemispheres will always experience seasons at different times.
Below are five pairings of cities with similar climates, based on research findings.
1. Perth, Australia, and Tijuana, Mexico
These two cities, both known for outdoor beach activities and clear, beautiful waters, are 9,389 miles apart but share regularly mild conditions and mild, hot summers.
2. New York City, New York, and Buenos Aires, Argentina
With more than 5,000 miles separating these North and South American cities, it may be surprising to learn that they both experience mild conditions that are contrasted by humid and hot summers.
3. Los Angeles, California, and Santiago, Chile
The Köppen Classification data revealed that the mild conditions and warm, dry summers in Los Angeles are a perfect match for the weather conditions in Santiago, Chile. The cities are just under 6,000 miles apart.
4. The Bahamas and Madurai, India
It’s possible that no two climate doppelgangers could be less alike than the islands of the Bahamas and the city of Madurai, India, which have more than 9,000 miles in between them.
Despite their differences, researchers discovered that they share similarly tropical savannas and dry winters.
5. Toronto, Canada, and Moscow, Russia
Although separated by more than 4,000 miles, Toronto and Moscow have the same snowy terrains and warm, humid summers in common.
Researchers were surprised by most of their findings due to geographical and topographical differences between the locations.
“The benefits here are to show something in a way that hasn’t been done before and start a conversation around the subject,” Snapper said.
“We can use data like this to inform people about the climate as well as show them the similarities between places they may have never guessed shared something in common,” he said.
Based on the data, enough variations existed between climate classification over the 10-year and 30-year periods to assume that these climate siblings may not remain the same if similar research was conducted in as little as 10 years from now, Snapper said.
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