Desert Climate
What comes first to your mind when you encounter the word "desert"? May be you think of the glaring sun, the searing heat. But did you know that deserts are not always hot. Some are really cold. In fact, Antarctica and the Arctic are deserts.
Deserts are known as the most extreme biomes because of its high and low temperatures. They also receive very low levels of precipitation, making them the driest places on Earth.
Temperatures in deserts differ whether it is generally hot or cold. In hot deserts, the temperatures can really go very high in the day, but very cold at night. At daytime, temperature ranges from 20 to 25° C, but their extreme maximum temperature ranges from 43.5 to 49° C in summer. At nighttime, it can go down as much as 0 ° C. But there are rare occasions that temperatures can exceed the maximum range. The world's hottest temperature was 56.7 C, recorded on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, California; but the highest land skin temperature recorded was found in the Lut Desert in Libya in 2005 and measured a stunning 70.7 C. While in temperate deserts, in winter temperature ranges from -2 to 4° C, whilst in the summer it ranges from 21 to 26° C. Well, the lowest temperature recorded is -53.7 °C in Antarctica. (Is someone freezing in here?)
Deserts are the driest places on Earth. They typically receive less than 250 mm (10 in) annually. The driest deserts often receive less than 5 inches a year. For example, Phoenix, Arizona receives less than 250 millimeters (10 in) of precipitation per year, and is immediately recognized as being located in a desert due to its arid adapted plants. The North Slope of Alaska's Brooks Range also receives less than 250 millimeters (10 in) of precipitation per year. Dryness is a characteristic of deserts; about eight times more water could evaporate from them than actually falls. An example of this is in Tucson, Arizona where it receives 12 inches of rain a year and 100 inches of water can evaporate over the year.
Below is a table of the annual rainfall received by the world's driest deserts.
Desert
Atacama Sahara Nubian Arabian Namib Taklamakan Sonoran Gobi Turkestan Mojave Antarctica Simpson Great Basin Great Victoria |
Continent
South America Africa Africa Asia Africa Asia North America Asia Asia North America Antarctica Australia North America Australia |
Average Annual Rainfall
1 mm (4/100 in) 12 mm (1/2 in) 18 mm (3/4 in) 35 mm (1 3/8 in) 45 mm (1 3/4 in) 55 mm (2 1/4 in) 90 mm (3 5/8 in) 125 mm (5 in) 145 mm (5 3/4 in) 150 mm (6 in) 166 mm (6 1/2 in) 185 mm (7 3/8 in) 190 mm (7 5/8 in) 200 mm (8 in) |
The driest desert, as a whole, is the Atacama desert in northern Chile and southern Peru. It receives only i mm of rain a year. But the driest place on Earth, is the Dry Valleys in Antarctica. Can you believe that it does not even receive precipitation? The valleys have extremely low humidity and almost no ice or snow cover – the largest ice-free region on the continent. Nearby mountains are high enough that they block seaward flowing ice from reaching the valleys. (This is very weird.)
We can see that deserts are very harsh environments, so we can expect that life in these places is very little, even none. Due to high temperatures and complete lack of moisture, normal vegetation and cultivation of food is almost impossible. And due to very low temperatures, vegetation and plant life is very sparse in these regions and the soil is ill-suited for farming and cultivation.
A TOUGH LIFE IN THE DESERTS!!