Anguipes wrote:The moving ICTZ causes the specific latitudes and absolute sizes of the cells to expand and contract, but not these proportions. The presence or absence of land also does not significantly affect these boundaries [confirmation needed].
I remember reading something once (can I find it now? Of course not!) that argued that the Mediterranean was an example of how really extenuating circumstances can slightly modify the proportions. IIRC, it was a perfect storm, so to speak between the Gulf Stream artificially warming European winters along with the really large amount of inland seas in the area preventing too much cooling (not just the Mediterranean, but also the Black Sea to a limited extent), and on the other end of the spectrum the Sahara (for reasons seemingly mostly unknown) has started to discourage the ICTZ from heading north. That said, the difference from what it would have been anyway (again IIRC, and from looking now at a map) was less than ten degrees, if not stunningly small.
Thinking about it now, it seems more like the temperate zone is merely more concentrated, having a sharper transition zone in the Maghreb (for comparison wiki the climates of San Francisco and Lisbon). Meanwhile, for reasons unclear, the ICTZ actually is having difficulties extending as far north as it should into Africa.
So, yes, almost all of the time, things should be proportionate, roughly.
@
Shihali: Monsoons are the part of climates that I am weakest on, but (assuming you mean the continent is cut by the equator) I don't think that would work. Monsoons work best where the continent can become
seasonally cooler than the surrounding waters, which just can't happen in the tropics (but can and does in the subtropics). I could see an equatorial supercontinent with the highest elevations in its northernmost and southernmost areas perhaps having slight monsoon patterns, but nothing like Asia, let alone North America.
[quote="Jar Jar Binks"]Now, by making just a few small changes, we prettify the orthography for happier socialist tomorrow![/quote][quote="Xonen"]^ WHS. Except for the log thing and the Andean panpipers.[/quote]