Climate Zones
Geography · Year 3–Year 6
Polar, temperate and tropical, and the lines between them.
About the climate zones
Two boards on one world map. Tap the three climate zones to name them, or switch to the lines and name the Equator, the two Tropics and the two polar circles. Show all the labels for the version that is not a quiz, or leave them off and let the class do the naming.
The zones are bands of latitude, so they are worked out from the four lines rather than drawn separately. The Tropics at 23.5 degrees are as far as the Sun ever gets from the Equator, which is why it can be overhead there and nowhere further; the polar circles at 66.5 are where the Sun can stay up, or stay down, for a whole day. Every band's edge is one of those lines, which is the fact the tool is for.
Polar and temperate are ONE zone each, drawn as two bands. The same distance from the Equator gives the same climate whichever way you go, and that symmetry is the idea: naming four separate things would teach that the north and the south are different places rather than mirror images of each other.
The bands wash over the land rather than replacing it, because a climate zone is a stripe of the world and not a stripe of the sea. A class can see the tropics crossing Africa and South America, and the temperate band crossing the United Kingdom, which is marked so the class can find it.
There are trees drawn across the temperate bands, palms across the tropics and nothing at all in the polar bands, which is the treeline drawn rather than stated: the polar line says “freezing all year, with ice and no trees”, and the empty band is the half a class remembers.
The map is the same projected coastline the world map uses, from Natural Earth's public domain data, in the Robinson projection an atlas uses. Its shape is the projection's own, flat topped with curved sides, because the five bands tile the whole world between them.
How to use it on your whiteboard
- 1Pick a board: zones or lines.
- 2Tap a band, or a line, to name it. Either half of a two-band zone works.
- 3The line under the map says something about whichever one you tapped.
- 4Press Show all to put every name on at once, and Hide to take them all off.
- 5Ask the class which zone we are in, and which zone the Equator runs through.
- 6Ask why there are no trees drawn at the top and the bottom of the map.
Questions
- Why are there only three zones?
- Because three is what a primary scheme teaches: polar, temperate and tropical, set by latitude. Fuller schemes split them further, into arid, Mediterranean and mountain zones among others, and those depend on rainfall and height as well as on distance from the Equator.
- Why is the polar zone in two places?
- Because it is one climate in two places. The Arctic and the Antarctic are the same distance from the Equator, so they get the same amount of sunlight and the same climate, which is the point of naming zones by latitude. Tapping either one names it.
- What are the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn?
- The furthest north and south the Sun is ever directly overhead, at 23.5 degrees, which is the same as the tilt of the Earth's axis. Between them the Sun is overhead twice a year, and that is what makes the tropical zone hot every month.