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Melbourne is very mild, but it needs hotter summers to be subtropical per Koeppen. I think if anyone needs to go back to met school in this case it's Trewartha. Under his system Melbourne is subtropical (8 months over 10C). I think that's what you were thinking of.
Thewartha's rating is funny.
In Australia a climate isn't subtropical without a lowest average monthly maximum is less than 18 C. (64 F)
Australians would probably insist on all months having an average monthly means above 12 C (54 F) to classify as subtropical
Even Adelaide's coldest month still has all average monthly means above 10.0 C
and they're considered to have a "cold" or "very cold" winter by Australian standards.
Melbourne is very mild, but it needs hotter summers to be subtropical per Koeppen. I think if anyone needs to go back to met school in this case it's Trewartha. Under his system Melbourne is subtropical (8 months over 10C). I think that's what you were thinking of.
https://www.city-data.com/forum/weath...d-climate.html
The summers in this climate are hardly warmer than Melbourne and that is only for 2 months of the year. The shoulder months are already much cooler. Winters are not even comparable.
I have averaged out the overnight lows and daytime highs for the three summer months for Melbourne and the climate in tvdxr's thread in the link.
So that minute difference in summer somehow makes this climate subtropical according to yourself and Koppen, despite it's Chicago-like winters yet Melbourne itself with winters some 15C warmer doesn't make the cut? If anything Melbourne is bloody equatorial in comparison
It appears Koppen has focused only on the summer and completely ignored the rest of the year. Hey, by that logic, Yakutsk is almost subtropical!
Can you not see how flawed and generalised this guy's climate classification is?
https://www.city-data.com/forum/weath...d-climate.html
The summers in this climate are hardly warmer than Melbourne and that is only for 2 months of the year. The shoulder months are already much cooler. Winters are not even comparable.
I have averaged out the overnight lows and daytime highs for the three summer months for Melbourne and the climate in tvdxr's thread in the link.
So that minute difference in summer somehow makes this climate subtropical according to yourself and Koppen, despite it's Chicago-like winters yet Melbourne itself with winters some 15C warmer doesn't make the cut? If anything Melbourne is bloody equatorial in comparison
It appears Koppen has focused only on the summer and completely ignored the rest of the year. Hey, by that logic, Yakutsk is almost subtropical!
Can you not see how flawed and generalised this guy's climate classification is?
And then posters like WaveHunter007 use this kind of reasoning to claim that Philadelphia is more subtropical than Sydney.
So that minute difference in summer somehow makes this climate subtropical according to yourself and Koppen, despite it's Chicago-like winters yet Melbourne itself with winters some 15C warmer doesn't make the cut? If anything Melbourne is bloody equatorial in comparison
It appears Koppen has focused only on the summer and completely ignored the rest of the year.
The summers and winters are borderline, and the summers are hotter than Melbourne's.
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Hey, by that logic, Yakutsk is almost subtropical!
Yakutsk maintains a snowpack. That combined with its -39C average makes it firmly continental. Hey, if being 36C colder than Koeppen's continental threshold doesn't make it continental, then nothing will.
Borderline cases are not good examples of any climate type, even if they do fit on one way or the other. Melbourne is rather close to subtropical limits, thus it isn't a shining example of oceanic climates. Ditto for Sydney. It's not a shining example of subtropical climates because of its borderline summers even though it is subtropical.
A climate deep within a zone and in the middle temperature-wise provides the best examples. Once you get within a few degrees C of the edge, it starts to grade into the approaching climate zone, no matter if it's subtropical, continental, subarctic, or tropical.
For instance, Jackson, Mississippi is a prototypical humid subtropical climate because it's right in the middle between -3C and +18C for the coldest month, and has summers that are typically hot for the region. Something like Erie, Pennsylvania is subtropical, but it's right on the border with being a continental climate (and it often though not consistently has a snowpack). On the other side, something like Port Saint Lucie is subtropical, but is right on the border with being a tropical climate (and it often has tropical temperatures and tropical plants). About half of the time these place's weather will qualify for the other climate zone (like a +/- 1F departure).
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Can you not see how flawed and generalised this guy's climate classification is?
Yakutsk isn't subtropical, and all the subtropical climates under Koeppen are warmer than the -3C persistent snowpack line and cooler than the 18C tropical isotherm (hence the term sub-tropical, having tropical-style summers with cooler winters, but still not cool enough to progress into a different climate grade (one that maintains snow on the ground)). It makes perfect sense.
In fact I'd say a man who thinks that anything below 15C is "cold" and classifies anything like Melbourne in the subarctic zone is far more flawed and generalized than Koeppen could ever hope to be.
Something like Erie, Pennsylvania is subtropical, but it's right on the border with being a continental climate (and it often though not consistently has a snowpack).
Just nitpicking here, but I've never seen Erie being classified as subtropical. If anything, it's on the border of Dfa and Dfb (hottest month's average is 27/18C).
TWC has 34/21F for Erie in the coldest month. That works out to a mean temperature of 27F, which is rather borderline. TWC also has 80/64F for the hottest month, which just barely makes the 22C mean temperature criterion.
It's the same with Port Saint Lucie only on the other end. Port Saint Lucie averages 72/52F for the coldest month, which falls only 2F short of the 18C criterion for a tropical climate. 90/70F is indicated for the hottest month, which obviously makes the grade.
My point is that both of these are borderline humid subtropical climates on each end of the scale, and although in my view they should still be classified as humid subtropical, borderline climates, regardless of type, take on some of the characteristics of the climate types they border.
As for Chicago, considering that its coldest month (January) has a daily mean of 25F (just below the -3C criterion), December and February actually average warmer than 26.6F, and it has many days without snow cover in the winter season, I don't think it is the be-all-end-all of continental climates. Sure, it makes it (there is a persistent snowpack in an average January) and it does have four seasons, but it isn't a shining example of a continental climate, at least in winter. If anything it's on the warm side. Minneapolis, which has a coldest month daily mean of 16F and all three winter months below -3C (but all other months above -3C), is a much better example of winter in a continental climate. Summers there are weaker than in Chicago, averaging only 2F above the 22C criterion, so I wouldn't hold it up as an example of Dfa climate summers (on the other hand, it's rather average for the combined Dfa/Dfb zone).
Anything that can't go palm trees or feel mild in winter without the need for jackets and coats is not subtropical.
That's a bit of a stringent definition. Unless you're the hardy type, chances are you'll need jackets in the middle of winter as far south as the Gulf Coast USA.
Except for the "feeling mild" part. Perhaps this is the beginning of the Flight Simmer system of climate classification....
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Unless you're the hardy type, chances are you'll need jackets in the middle of winter as far south as the Gulf Coast USA.
I consider myself to be one of the hardy types. In an average day in almost any Koeppen subtropical climate I wouldn't need a jacket. Of course, there is so much variation in many of these places it's really hard to tell. For instance, in the Ohio Valley (Koeppen Cfa) it could be 70F in the middle of winter, but it could just as easily be 25F and snowing. Most of the time it doesn't stick around into a maintainable snowpack though, so that is the key to wintertime classification (at least based on nature - jackets and the like are more subjective and it's a different take on classification anyway).
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