There’s a fair amount of discussion about why Europe is (for its latitude) so much warmer than America, but I can’t seem to find any explanations about why Europe is so dry compared to America.
To explain what I’m talking about, I’ve been looking into the climate data on Wikipedia of European and American cities recently and have noticed a very sharp difference their average precipitation levels. Specifically, European cities consistently seem to receive around 20-30 inches (about 500-760 mm) of rain a year whereas American cities east of the 98th degree longitude (about in the middle of Texas) receive somewhere between 40-60 inches (around 1000-1500 mm). The only European exceptions seem to be western parts of Ireland, the UK, and mountainous areas like northern Spain.
Even American cities in the plains west of the 98 receive rain comparable to places like Volgograd (between 15-20 inches) and places like Phoenix receive rain about equal to Atyrau (a Kazakhstani city on the north coast of the Caspian).
What makes this especially odd to me is that Europe, as a geographic entity, seems like it should receive more rain than America, given that most land in Europe is substantially closer to water compared to most places in America.
In: Planetary Science
I’m no climatologist/meteorologist/oceanologist, but since weather patterns move west to east, and the west side of the US is the pacific ocean which is roughly 2.5 times as wide as the Atlantic, there’s probably more moisture that is in the upper atmosphere after passing over the Pacific than when passing over the Atlantic.
I know that ocean currents have much to do with it as well, not to mention average temps… From what I can gather, the Pacific ocean is a good amount warmer on average than the Atlantic.
I bet if you compared precipitation in South America(controlling for rainforest precipitation) you’d find a similar trend.
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