Why is Australia so overwhelmingly dry when nearby places like Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Tasmania are all so wet and lush?
In: Other
There’s a variety of factors
Australia’s geographical position has a lot to do with it. Australia is south of the high-moisture tropical belt that Indonesia and New Guinea are in. It sits under the subtropical high-pressure belt, which prevents the lifting of air required for rain.
Another factor is sheer size. The coastal areas of Australia actually get a lot of rain, but this drains the moisture out of the air so there isn’t any left to get to core of the continent. Where-as New Zealand is much narrower so the clouds get a chance to rain on the whole sub-continent.
The other part of this is mountains, or the lack there of. Australia doesn’t have any significant mountain ranges so there is no geography to force moisture laden air upwards to seed mountains and glaciers with snow. This prevents river systems from forming like we get in North+South America. The Amazon in the South and Prairies in the North only exist because of the climate caused by the mountain ranges to their West.
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