Seasons and Climate
"Tropical" is sometimes used in a general sense for a tropical climate to mean warm to hot and moist year-round, often with the sense of lush vegetation.
Many tropical areas have a dry and wet season. The wet season, rainy season or green season, is the time of year, covering one or more months, when most of the average annual rainfall in a region falls. Areas with wet seasons are disseminated across portions of the tropics and subtropics. Under the Köppen climate classification, for tropical climates, a wet season month is defined as a month where average precipitation is 60 millimetres (2.4 in) or more. Tropical rainforests technically do not have dry or wet seasons, since their rainfall is equally distributed through the year. Some areas with pronounced rainy seasons see a break in rainfall during mid-season when the intertropical convergence zone or monsoon trough moves poleward of their location during the middle of the warm season.
When the wet season occurs during the warm season, or summer, precipitation falls mainly during the late afternoon and early evening hours. The wet season is a time when air quality improves, freshwater quality improves, and vegetation grows significantly, leading to crop yields late in the season. Floods cause rivers to overflow their banks, and some animals to retreat to higher ground. Soil nutrients diminish and erosion increases. The incidence of malaria increases in areas where the rainy season coincides with high temperatures. Animals have adaptation and survival strategies for the wetter regime. Unfortunately, the previous dry season leads to food shortages into the wet season, as the crops have yet to mature.
Regions within the tropics may well not have a tropical climate. There are alpine tundra and snow-capped peaks, including Mauna Kea, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Andes as far south as the northernmost parts of Chile and Argentina. Under the Köppen climate classification, much of the area within the geographical tropics is classed not as "tropical" but as "dry" (arid or semi-arid) including the Sahara Desert, the Atacama Desert and Australian Outback.
Read more about this topic: Tropics
Famous quotes containing the words seasons and/or climate:
“While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If often he was wrong and at times absurd,
To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)