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Australia has a wide variety of climates due to its large geographical size. The largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid. Only the south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate and moderately fertile soil. The northern part of the country has a tropical climate, varying between grasslands and desert. Australia holds many ...
By far the largest part of Australia is arid or semi-arid. A total of 18% of Australia's mainland consists of named deserts, [20] while additional areas are considered to have a desert climate based on low rainfall and high temperature. Only the south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate and moderately fertile soil.
More rarely, snow can fall on the nearby Porongurup Range. Snow outside these areas is a significant event; it usually occurs in hilly areas of southwestern Australia. The most widespread low-level snow occurred on 26 June 1956 when snow was reported in the Perth Hills, as far north as Wongan Hills and east as Salmon Gums.
Tourism sign post in Yalgoo, Western Australia. The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia.The Outback is more remote than the bush.While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a number of climatic zones, including tropical and monsoonal climates in northern areas, arid areas in the ...
Most desert/arid climates receive between 25 and 200 mm (1 and 8 in) of rainfall annually, [2] [3] although some of the most consistently hot areas of Central Australia, the Sahel and Guajira Peninsula can be, due to extreme potential evapotranspiration, classed as arid with the annual rainfall as high as 430 millimetres or 17 inches.
By international standards, the Great Australian desert receives relatively high rates of rainfall, around 250 mm (9.84 in) on average, but due to the high evapotranspiration it would be correspondingly arid. [3] No Australian weather stations situated in an arid region record less than 100 mm (3.94 in) of average annual rainfall. [4]
Australia's size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with tropical rainforests in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and desert in the centre. [174] The desert or semi-arid land commonly known as the outback makes up by far the largest portion of land. [175]
In winter it normally moves north, therefore permitting cold fronts and low pressure systems to relocate up from the Great Australian Bight and bring rainfall to most parts of southern Australia. [6] The high is part of the subtropical ridge system and it is the reason why a large part of Australia is arid to semi-arid. [7]