adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a continent. 2. often Continental Of or relating to the mainland of Europe; European.

Continentality, a measure of the difference between continental and marine climates characterized by the increased range of temperatures that occurs over land compared with water. …

Another major control in climate is continentality : the distance to major water bodies such as oceans. The climate is similar to Moscow, but the continentality is higher and the precipitation lower. Despite its southern location, due to elevation and continentality , climate of Sevan is similar to Eastern Finland.

What does the term continentality mean? Answer: As the distance from the sea increases the moderating influence of the sea decreases and the people experience extreme weather conditions. This is called continentality i.e. very hot in summers and cold in winters, e.g. in Delhi.

Continentality refers to a climatic effect that emerges because of the different range of temperature that exists at places lying in the interior of the continent away from the moderating influence of the sea and the places that are located near the continent.

Distance from the sea (Continentality) The sea affects the climate of a place. Coastal areas are cooler and wetter than inland areas. In the summer, temperatures can be very hot and dry as moisture from the sea evaporates before it reaches the centre of the land mass.

Large bodies of water, such as oceans, have an effect on the climate of certain locations and regions within a given proximity. The effect of an ocean’s airflow on the climate of the surrounding areas, also known as the maritime effect, is generally milder temperatures and a decreased variation in temperatures.

Rainshadow and continentality Air descending from mountainous areas warms and dries by compression, little rainfall forms and aridity is the result. Central areas of continents are dry because air moving over landmasses does not absorb large amounts of water vapour.

As the air rises, it cools and drops its moisture as heavy tropical rains. The resulting cooler, drier air mass moves away from the Equator. As it approaches the tropics, the air descends and warms up again. The descending air hinders the formation of clouds, so very little rain falls on the land below.

Burial in desert environments appears to enhance Egyptian preservation rites, and the dead were buried facing due west. By 3400 BCE, the Sahara was as dry as it is today, due to reduced precipitation and higher temperatures resulting from a shift in the Earth’s orbit.

Critics noted that, while some parts of the Sahara Desert were indeed below sea level, much of the Sahara Desert was above sea level. This, they said, would produce an irregular sea of bays and coves; it would also be considerably smaller than estimates by Etchegoyen suggested.

How Hot Is The Sahara Desert? The Sahara is the hottest desert in the world – with one of the harshest climates. The average annual temperature is 30°C, whilst the hottest temperature ever recorded was 58°C.

June marks the beginning of summer when it’s usually warmer than 80 F with an average range between 20-31 ºC. The Sahara desert is a hot place all year, but July and August are by far the hottest months. Temperatures above 35°C (95°F) have been recorded in these months since records began decades ago!

Precipitation in the Sahara ranges from zero to about 3 inches of rain per year, with some locations not seeing rain for several years at a time. Occasionally, snow falls at higher elevations.

Death Valley

75 degrees Fahrenheit

The 10 most dangerous desert creatures

• Saw Scaled Viper. Found across Africa, the Middle East, and south Asia, these snakes are among the most deadly in the world.
• Gila Monster.
• Wild Dogs.
• Cougar.
• Inland Taipan.
• Ostrich.
• Western Diamondback Rattlesnake.
• Killer Bees.

Among the mammal species still found in the Sahara are the gerbil, jerboa, Cape hare, and desert hedgehog; Barbary sheep and scimitar-horned oryx; dorcas gazelle, dama deer, and Nubian wild ass; anubis baboon; spotted hyena, common jackal, and sand fox; and Libyan striped weasel and slender mongoose.

around 25%

Arid and semi-arid regions are the main global dust sources, where particles can be lifted into the atmosphere, transported, and deposited far away from their sources12. Many authors suggest that Saharan dust contributes considerably to fertilizing the Amazon rainforest through nutrient exportation10,16,17.

quartz grains

Africa

We don’t own the Sahara desert. The Sahara is “owned” by Africans in at least 11 countries. Many of those countries are not exactly paragons of political stability (e.g. Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia).

Sahara. Expresses the Arabic for “desert.”

Where did the massive amount of the sand that forms the Sahara Desert come from? The sand is primarily derived from weathering of Cretaceous sandstones in North Africa. When these sandstones were deposited in the Cretaceous, the area where they are now was a shallow sea.

5,000 years ago the Sahara desert was home to people, animals, and lush vegetation. As recently as 5,000 years ago, one of the world’s driest and most uninhabitable places, the Western Sahara desert, was home to a vast river system that would rank as the world’s 12th largest drainage basin if it existed today.

Sometime between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago, after the last ice age ended, the Sahara Desert transformed. Green vegetation grew atop the sandy dunes and increased rainfall turned arid caverns into lakes.

Summary: As little as 6,000 years ago, the vast Sahara Desert was covered in grassland that received plenty of rainfall, but shifts in the world’s weather patterns abruptly transformed the vegetated region into some of the driest land on Earth. …