Coastal desert

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The so-called sand sea of ​​the Namib desert in southwestern Africa (dark yellow area). The section covers about 750 km in north-south direction, from Walvis Bay in the north to Lüderitz in the south.
This fog bank in the Namib desert drifted 110 km inland to Aus (2018)

The coastal desert is an extreme type of desert in the coastal area that develops in the tropics and subtropics under the influence of a cold ocean current. The drought in this area is exacerbated by the upwelling of cold deep water near the coast, caused by offshore trade winds . Due to the Coriolis force , coastal deserts can only be found on the western sides of continents.

The superposition of warm trade winds on cold sea air creates an inversion layer , which prevents atmospheric convection and therefore the formation of precipitation . On the other hand , fog forms on the resulting layer of haze , on the underside of the inversion , as the sea air is very humid. In the corresponding coastal strip, a coastal desert is then formed as a fog desert .

There are three well-developed cases of this type of desert worldwide: the Namib on the south-west African coast, the Atacama on the Chilean and Peruvian coasts of South America and the desert on the Pacific coast of Lower California in Mexico (see also Sonoran Desert ). There are some borderline cases on the north-west coast of Africa , on the easternmost of the Canary Islands , on the north-west coast of Australia and possibly on the coast of Somalia .

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Deserts very close to the sea. Coastal deserts. Bayerischer Rundfunk , June 5, 2015, accessed on January 21, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Logan, Richard F .: Causes, climates and distribution of deserts . In: Brown, G. W., jr. (Ed.): Desert biology: special topics on the physical and biological aspects of arid regions I . 2013, ISBN 978-1-4832-2371-1 , IV. Coal Costal Deserts , pp. 37–41 ( limited preview in the Google book search - first edition: Elsevier, 1968, Grenzfalls including Somalia: p. 38).