I could swear that your Desert was Desserts...that's what I was responding to. You changed it didn't you? haha
This post was edited by Baba at December 3, 2017 8:40 PM MST
In forests there are shade from the trees. In deserts there are very little vegetation to bind water in the topsoil. That makes deserts more vulnerable to sunshine heating. And also to nighttime cooling. Freezing temperatures at night are not uncommon in the Sahara desert and other equatorial deserts.
Then again it dont nessesarily means that all deserts are hot. Antarctica is a very cold desert, both day and night ;-))
This post was edited by JakobA the unAmerican. at December 3, 2017 8:42 PM MST
The only thing all deserts have in common is a dry climate.
There are usually two or three variations of a desert climate: a hot desert climate (BWh), a cold desert climate (BWk) and, sometimes, a mild desert climate (BWh/BWn). Furthermore, to delineate "hot desert climates" from "cold desert climates", there are three widely used isotherms: either a mean annual temperature of 18 °C (which is the most accurate and most commonly used), or a mean temperature of 0 °C or −3 °C in the coldest month, so that a location with a "BW" type climate with the appropriate temperature above whichever isotherm is being used is classified as "hot arid" (BWh), and a location with the appropriate temperature below the given isotherm is classified as "cold arid" (BWk).
To determine whether a location has an arid climate, the precipitation threshold is determined. The precipitation threshold (in millimetres) involves first multiplying the average annual temperature in °C by 20, then adding 280 if 70% or more of the total precipitation is in the high-sun half of the year (April through September in the Northern Hemisphere, or October through March in the Southern), or 140 if 30–70% of the total precipitation is received during the applicable period, or 0 if less than 30% of the total precipitation is so received. If the area's annual precipitation is less than half the threshold, it is classified as a BW (desert climate).
We call a place a desert because it is sparsely populated. It does not have to be dry, or hot, or sandy, or anything else. All it has to be is deserted.
Antarctica is a desert and currently it is not very warm there. I believe that a desert is a place that has little rain and no vegetation, not a hot place.
This was to Jewels Vern: I pressed the wrong "Reply".
Being "deserted" is not the real definition of a "desert"! :-) It's really a region of very low mean annual precipitation, be that rain or snow, as Tom Jackson explains.
This post was edited by Durdle at January 13, 2018 7:04 PM MST
OK! I did. Lots of very pretty pictures of desert-ed islands, but not deserts! Just the opposite - most are richly-vegetated, not the usual characteristic of a true desert.
I do not use the popular-fiction idea which confuses geographical desert with humanly-deserted. If a desert is merely somewhere with very few inhabitants then the more remote areas of the Scottish Highlands would be called a desert.
I use the proper definition that a desert is a region having below a certain level of mean annual precipitation, whether it is tropical like the Gobi or Sahara, more temperate but dry semi-arid areas such in parts of Spain, or frigid like Antarctica.
Benedict Arnold 