Desert+Home

 =Desert Home Page =  Hello and welcome to the desert home page! Our names are Elise M. and Nick. T. and the biome we are going to be telling you all about is the desert.   The Desert Biome is located in many different areas of the world. Many of them are located in bands around 30 degrees Latitude North and 30 degrees Latitude South. Many other deserts exist due to the rain shadow effect. This is when air moves up over a mountain range. Eventually the air gets cold and can't hold moisture anymore, therefore it rains and snows. When it goes down the other side of the mountain, the air warms, and can hold moisture so it hardly ever rains. This forms a desert. Here is a map to show you exactly where deserts are located.

As you can see, deserts are located in many different places. This includes most of Western United States. There is even cool desert located in Southern Canada. There is some along the Western Coast of South America, and a small area around the Eastern Coast of Brazil. All of Northern Africa is covered in it, along with a smaller area located at the Southern tip. Australia is mostly desert once you get past the wet coastline area. Most of the Middle East is desert as well as parts of China.

The climate in the desert varies greatly from place to place. There are two seasons in a desert. This is true for all four types: hot and dry, semiarid, coastal, and cold. These two seasons are winter/wet and summer/dry. Overall, the temperature is an average of 25-29 degrees C and the average precipitation is 4.63- 6.63 centimeters. However, these numbers very quite a bit in the different types of deserts. In a cold desert, the average winter temperature is from -2 to 4 degrees C, and in the summer 21- 26 degrees C. The average precipitation in a cold desert in the winter is mostly 16- 26 cm of snow. Hardly any snow falls in the summer. Another type of desert is a coastal desert. The average temperature in the winter is 5 degrees C and lower. In the summer, the average temperature is from 13- 24 degrees C. They receive about 8-13 cm of precipitation yearly, mostly in the winter. Thirdly, semiarid deserts have an average summer temperature of about 21- 27 degrees C. The temperature in the winter is generally about -5 to 5 degrees C. On average, they recieve 2-4 cm during the winter and hardly any during the summer. Last but now least, hot and dry deserts has an average winter temperature of about 10- 15 degrees C and an average summer tempature of about 30- 35 degrees C. The average amount of precipitation is very small, usually below 15 cm yearly, and like the other three types receives almost all of this precipitation in the winter.



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