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Some of these mysteries clear up when you understand inland climate vs coastal climate.

The ocean changes temperature very slowly. In summer it's colder than land, and in winter it's warmer. This acts to keep land temperature semi stable over the seasons.

Inland there are no such dampeners. Summers get real hot and winters are very cold.

Which is why Edmonton probably (I haven't checked) has much colder winters than northern Norway.

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Also very importantly Europe gets the Gulf stream to keep it mild

I have heard that's a myth, and it's really just that the North Atlantic is big and the prevailing winds go east.

I haven't done the deep research to confirm that, so just take this a me spreading a rumor.

Well that would be a turn up for the books because one of the often mentioned bad consequences of global warming is a loss of the North Atlantic Drift (gulf stream) from Europe and us ending up with a climate similar to what the same latitude of Canada has.

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