CAS ES 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Atacama Desert, Rain Shadow, Global Warming
24 Dec 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Global climate change wind and deserts12/14/15 00:59. Desertification as glaciers are shrinking the earth"s deserts are growing. Additional factors: global warming, over grazing, groundwater depletion, irrigation-induced soil salination, deforestation, urbanization, mining without reclamation. Wind as an agent of erosion and deposition. Polar (60) perpetual snow cover but slow precipitation (antarctica and greenland) equatorial low pressure - heated, humid air rises, cools and loses water due to precipitation. Results in subtropical deserts that are doubly dry: loss of water through rain and heating with compression, such as the sahara, arabian, sonora deserts. Deep interior deserts the gobi of china and mongolia. Rain shadow deserts downwind of mountain ranges: rain forest to deserts also doubly dried eastern washington, In places, it has not rained for up to. Chile andes, 5000m above the atacama desert (ice sublimation into dry air) Wind erosion: saltation dancing sand, suspension airborne silt and clay.
