Modern Geography

by Marion I. Newbigin

The main features of the Mediterranean climate may be briefly summarised. The most important character, next to the mild temperature, is the fact that no rain (or very little) falls in summer, the growing season further north, which is here largely a period of cessation of plant growth. The rain, which tends to be scanty or even absent in the interior of land masses, e. g. in Spain and Asia Minor, and also to the south, e. g. in the Desert of Sahara, in the Mediterranean region proper falls in the winter months. It is this winter rainfall and the summer drought which define the Mediterranean type of climate.

The reason for this seasonal distribution of rainfall is as interesting as the fact itself, and to understand it we must turn to the circulation of air on the surface of the globe.

In the following description we shall restrict ourselves, for the sake of clearness, to the Mediterranean region itself, the region where the Mediterranean type of climate is developed over the largest area, and where, for many reasons, it is most important. But it must be noted that the conditions which give rise to the Mediterranean type of climate are the same wherever it occurs, though in the Mediterranean area they are greatly modified by the great inland sea of that name, which carries oceanic conditions far into the land.

We must note, first, that at all seasons those regions of the earth which are directly beneath the vertical rays of the sun are heated most intensely. Therefore the air over these regions, being rendered light by heating, rises, and a belt of low pressure is thus formed. Only at the equinoxes does this belt of high temperature, low pressure, and light winds or calms, coincide with the equator. In the northern summer it moves north with the sun; in the northern winter it travels south with the sun, being always over what is called the heat equator. Into this belt of low pressure air from north and south, where the pressure is greater, tends to rush in, and we have thus formed the constant or “trade” winds, which, owing to the deflection produced by the earth’s rotation, appear as the north-east trades in the northern hemisphere and the south-east in the south. These winds are dry winds, because they blow from colder to warmer latitudes, and they accompany the equatorial low-pressure belt in its north and south movements.

In the northern summer the trade winds may extend northward to lat. 35° or even 40°, while in winter their northern limit is 10° to 15° further south. A glance at the map, then, will show that in summer the Mediterranean area is within or near the sphere of action of the dry trade winds, which are continental, sweeping into the region after having blown over land surfaces.

We must next consider the atmospheric movements in the region to the north of the trade wind belt. An area of more or less permanent low pressure, best marked in winter, exists in the North Atlantic, in about 60° N. lat., and draws the air into it in the direction known as counterclockwise, that is, in the direction opposite to that of the hands of the clock. The result is the production of the winds which appear off the coast of western Europe as the warm south-westerly winds of winter, while they appear off the coast of North America as cold northerly winds. In the southern hemisphere, where, as we have seen, there is less land to interfere with the development of the atmospheric circulation, these winds form the prevailing westerlies.

In the Atlantic these south-westerly winds obviously blow in a direction opposite to the north-east trades, whence the name of anti-trades often given to them. As they blow across the broad Atlantic they arrive off Europe saturated with moisture. As they come from lower latitudes they are warmth bringing. In winter these winds reach the Mediterranean area owing to the southern shift of the trades, and bring moisture with them; while in summer they lie more to the north, and though their moisture affects the coast of Portugal it does not reach the greater part of the Mediterranean area.

Within that area the northern limit of the rainless summer may be said, in a rough sense, to correspond with about the 40th parallel of latitude, though it varies according to local conditions in the different peninsulas. To the north of this line, therefore, the climate is more or less affected even in summer by the anti-trades.

It must not be supposed that the region of the trade winds and of the anti-trades lie side by side. Between the two there is a zone of variable winds, but in general terms we can explain the peculiarities of the Mediterranean rainfall by saying that the region lies within or just at the edge of the dry trades in summer, and within the zone of the moist anti-trades in winter.