BRITISH TYPE CLIMATE

• Moderately warm summers and fairly mild winters.
• Rainfall occurs throughout the year with winter maxima.

TEMPERATURE

• The mean annual temperatures are usually between 5° C and 15° C.
• Winters are abnormally mild. This is because of the warming effect brought by warm North Atlantic Drift.
• Sometimes, unusual cold spells are caused by the invasion of cold polar continental air (Polar Vortex)from the interiors.

PRECIPITATION

• The British type of climate has adequate rainfall throughout the yearwith a tendency towards a slight winter maximum (due to frontal cyclones).
• Western margins have the heaviest rainfall due to westerlies.
• Relief can make great differences in the annual amount. This is particularly significant in New Zealand where the western margins are subjected to heavy orographic rainfall whereas the eastern Canterbury plainsreceive comparatively less rainfall due to rain-shadow effect.

THE SEASONS

• As in other temperate regions there are four distinct seasons.
• Winter is the season of cloudy skies, foggy and misty mornings, and many rainy days from the passing depressions.
• Spring is the driest and the most refreshing season when people emerge from the depressing winter to see everything becoming green again.
• This is followed by the long, sunny summer.
• Next is the autumn with the roar of gusty winds; and the cycle repeats itself.
• This type of climate with its four distinct seasons is something that is conspicuously absent in the tropics. [Rainforest == Only Rainy season, Tropical Monsoon == Summer, Winter and Rainy, Tropical Savanna == Summer (rains) and Winter]

NATURAL VEGETATION IN BRITISH TYPE CLIMATE

• The natural vegetation of this climatic type is deciduous forest.
• The trees shed their leaves in the cold season.
• This is an adaptation for protecting themselves against the winter snow and frost.
• Shedding begins in autumn, the ‘fall’ season.
• Some of the common species include oak, elm, ash, birch, beech, and poplar.
• In the wetter areas grow willows (Light weight cricket bats are made from willows. In India willows are found in Kashmir).

Higher up the mountains in the Scandinavian highlands, the Rockies, southern Andes and the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the deciduous trees are generally replaced by the conifers which can survive a higher altitude, a lower temperature and poorer soils.