The dry areas of the subtropics-such as the desert regions of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, South Africa, Australia, and central South America-are due to the presence of semipermanent subtropical anticyclones in which the air subsides and becomes warm and dry. Thunderstorms occur most often in the tropical latitudes over land, where the air is most likely to heat quickly and form strong updrafts. During the annual cycle, the doldrums move toward the summer hemisphere, so outside a central region near the Equator, which has abundant rain at all seasons, there is a zone that receives much rain in summer but a good deal less in winter. In the equatorial belt, the trade winds from both hemispheres converge and give rise to a general upward motion of air, which becomes intensified locally in tropical storms that produce very heavy rains in the Caribbean, the Indian and southwest Pacific oceans, and the China Sea and in thunderstorms that are especially frequent and active over the land areas. Rain tends to be abundant on the windward slopes of mountain ranges but sparse on the lee sides. On the other hand, in high latitudes the west coasts are generally wetter than the east coasts. In the subtropics, the trade winds bring plentiful rain to the east coasts of the continents, but the west coasts tend to be dry. Because rainfall results from the ascent and cooling of moist air, the areas of heavy rain indicate regions of rising air, whereas the deserts occur in regions in which the air is warmed and dried during descent. If Earth’s surface were perfectly uniform, the long-term average rainfall would be distributed in distinct latitudinal bands, but the situation is complicated by the pattern of the global winds, the distribution of land and sea, and the presence of mountains. Learn about how interactions between the water cycle and landforms, as in orographic lifting, affect climate and weather. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
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