For the Australian television series, see Rain Shadow (TV series).
Effect of a rain shadowThe Tibetan Plateau (center), perhaps the best example of a rain shadow. Rainfalls from the southern South Asian monsoon do not make it far past the Himalayas (seen by the snow line at the bottom), leading to an arid climate on the leeward (north) side of the mountain range and the desertification of the Tarim Basin (top).
A rain shadow is an area of significantly reduced rainfall behind a mountainous region, on the side facing away from prevailing winds, known as its leeward side.
Evaporated moisture from water bodies (such as oceans and large lakes) is carried by the prevailing onshore breezes towards the drier and hotter inland areas. When encountering elevated landforms, the moist air is driven upslope towards the peak, where it expands, cools, and its moisture condenses and starts to precipitate. If the landforms are tall and wide enough, most of the humidity will be lost to precipitation over the windward side (also known as the rainward side) before ever making it past the top. As the air descends the leeward side of the landforms, it is compressed and heated, producing foehn winds that absorb moisture downslope and cast a broad "shadow" of dry climate region behind the mountain crests. This climate typically takes the form of shrub–steppe, xeric shrublands or even deserts.
The condition exists because warm moist air rises by orographic lifting to the top of a mountain range. As atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing altitude, the air has expanded and adiabatically cooled to the point that the air reaches its adiabatic dew point (which is not the same as its constant pressure dew point commonly reported in weather forecasts). At the adiabatic dew point, moisture condenses onto the mountain and it precipitates on the top and windward sides of the mountain. The air descends on the leeward side, but due to the precipitation it has lost much of its moisture. Typically, descending air also gets warmer because of adiabatic compression (as with foehn winds) down the leeward side of the mountain, which increases the amount of moisture that it can absorb and creates an arid region.[1]
^Whiteman, C. David (2000). Mountain Meteorology: Fundamentals and Applications. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513271-8.
A rainshadow is an area of significantly reduced rainfall behind a mountainous region, on the side facing away from prevailing winds, known as its leeward...
A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with...
needed] A rainshadow is a dry area on the leeward side of a mountainous area (away from the wind). The mountains block the passage of rain-producing...
Orographic lifting can have a number of effects, including precipitation, rainshadowing, leeward winds, and associated clouds. Precipitation induced by orographic...
accessed from Kanthalloor-Marayoor-Munnar. Kanthalloor is a virtually rainshadow village, lying in the eastern side of the Western Ghats near to Marayur...
air rises above the mountains, it becomes dry, resulting in forming a rainshadow region with very less rainfall on the leeward side towards the interior...
between the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Madre Oriental on the east, and the rainshadow–creating Cascades, Sierra Nevada, Transverse, and Peninsular Ranges on...
Rain Typical sound of rain with thunder Problems playing this file? See media help. Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor...
the leeward side it blocks. The drier leeward area is said to be in a rainshadow. The term "windward" has roots in both Low German and Old English. The...
from either the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean, creating a two-sided rainshadow effect. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Atacama Desert...
However, the Sierra casts a rainshadow, which greatly affects the climate and ecology of the central Great Basin. This rainshadow is largely responsible...
coast (around Murcia), and places cut off from adequate moisture due to rainshadow effects such as Zaragoza. In Asia, a subtropical steppe can be found...
Mohave: Hayikwiir Mat'aar; Spanish: Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rainshadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the...
forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rainshadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island and...
is a white, red and yellow landscape of 2,800 to 3,300 kilometres of rainshadow heading west in turn feature normally arid cattle lands of the Channel...
are katabatic. For instance, winds such as the föhn and chinook are rainshadow winds where air driven upslope on the windward side of a mountain range...
that occurs in the lee (downwind side) of a mountain range. It is a rainshadow wind that results from the subsequent adiabatic warming of air that has...
mountain range casts a large rainshadow over the desert. Weather coming in from the Pacific Ocean quickly loses its moisture as rain and snow as it is forced...
little rainfall. The valley is extremely dry because it lies in the rainshadow of four major mountain ranges (including the Sierra Nevada and Panamint...
above sea level, Damascus experiences an arid climate because of the rainshadow effect. The Barada River flows through Damascus. Damascus is one of the...
the Most Outstanding Actress category for her role in the drama RainShadow. "Shadow over the Adelaide Hills". The Sunday Mail (Adelaide). 6 October 2007...
east to empty into the Bay of Bengal.The Penna river basin lies in the rainshadow region of Eastern Ghats and receives 500 mm average rainfall annually...
jungles of rhododendron and bamboo, while the north-facing slopes, in the rainshadow, have a drier colder climate similar to that of the near-by Tibetan Plateau...
(see Foehn) on the descending (generally warming), leeward side where a rainshadow is observed. In Hawaii, Mount Waiʻaleʻale (Waiʻaleʻale), on the island...
Pokhara gets a lot of rain, the northern parts often receive less than 10% of the precipitation due to their location within a rainshadow. The Annapurna area...
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