Why do temperatures vary

A part of your brain called the hypothalamus is responsible for this. When you get too cold, it signals your body to preserve heat by shrinking your blood vessels, and to produce heat by shivering. And when you get too hot, it signals your body to make sweat to cool off. Ford says. As for that gray area in between a fever and the high end of a healthy temperature? Ford explains. Persistent low-grade or high-grade fevers could signal that something else is going on in your body.

Young kids generally tend to push thermometer readings higher than adults. Studies show that core body temperature decreases with age. Studies have shown that there is nothing unique about your head when it comes to heat loss — any part of your body that is not covered loses heat and will reduce your core body temperature proportionally. Fibbing won't cause your nose to grow, but it will make it colder. Despite this discrepancy with the old children's story, researchers at the University of Grenada in Spain dubbed their findings the "Pinocchio effect.

Like your food spicy? It may raise your body temperature — and your metabolism. A study published in Physiology and Behavior had participants add about 1 gram of red pepper to their food. Their core body temperature rose, but their skin temperature was lower.

Therapeutic hypothermia is a type of treatment sometimes used for people who have cardiac arrest when the heart suddenly stops beating , according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Lowering the body temperature right after cardiac arrest can reduce damage to the brain, and raises the chances that the person will recover. This isn't just crime-show fodder.

After people die, they no longer produce body heat, and the body slowly cools. Algor mortis has been used as a tool in forensic investigations to estimate how long a person has been deceased after their body has been discovered. By subscribing you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Health Topics.

Mixing allows heat to be carried deeper into the water column much faster than heat is conducted and brings up cooler water that gives off energy to the atmosphere more slowly because it is cool. As a result, mixed water heats up more slowly than does land, which experiences almost no vertical mixing. Water has another unique capacity relative to land — it can store abundant energy as latent heat. Insolation that strikes water is transformed into one of three different fluxes of energy.

Some energy goes into heating the water ground heat , some heats the air sensible heat in the atmosphere , but a large amount goes into latent heat produced by evaporation. In contrast, insolation striking land goes almost entirely into sensible heat in the atmosphere and into ground heat.

Land contains some water, but lesser amounts of its insolation goes into latent heat. Another factor that influences the global energy budget, and the balance of energy that falls on land versus the oceans, is the difference between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. As can be observed on any map or globe, the Northern Hemisphere has the majority of the planet's landmasses, whereas the Southern Hemisphere is dominated by oceans. As a result, an equal amount of insolation striking both hemispheres will result in more latent heat being generated in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere.

In December, when the Southern Hemisphere more directly faces the Sun, more insolation will fall on water than during June. These various factors, from specific heat to latent heat, cause land and water to respond very differently to insolation and to the change from day to night.

Examples: Sahel in N. Africa, large parts of India, parts of N. Temperate climates are maritime or continental. Maritime climates are strongly affected by the oceans with a fairly steady temperature across the seasons, whilst continental climates are more inland with warmer summers and colder winters.

Examples: UK maritime , central Europe continental. Covered by snow and ice throughout the year. Sun is never high enough in the sky to cause widespread melting. Temperatures usually below freezing. Examples: Greenland, northern Siberia, Arctic north pole ; Antarctic south pole. It takes a year for the Earth to orbit around the Sun.

As the Earth moves, the angle at which sunlight strikes different places on the Earth at the same time of day changes because the Earth is tilted.

When a particular location is tilted towards the Sun, warmer temperatures occur summer ; when the same place is tilted away from the Sun, colder temperature occur winter. These seasons are at opposite times of the year for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Near the equator the angle of the Sun remains high throughout the year so seasonal changes in temperature are not evident at these locations. Winds also affect the temperature of different places on the Earth.

The average worldwide wind system is called the general circulation of the atmosphere. Heat energy from places near the equator is transported to colder temperate and polar regions.

If this heat transfer by winds did not occur, then equatorial places would continue to heat up and polar regions would continue to cool down.