Asia covers one-third of the Earth's surface and almost every known climate occurs on this continent. It is the largest and most climatically continental, has the highest average elevation above sea level, and is wettest, coldest, and physically most diverse of all continents. Other than climate, few common denominators unite this vast land mass (Tsuchiya, 1964; Dando, 1983a. 1983b; Oliver, 1984).
Climates in Asia are subject to land influences as opposed to maritime influences, and seasonal variations in temperature and moisture are extreme. Asia's climates differ from region to region because of variations in the amount, intensity, and spatial distribution of solar energy, temperature, humidity and precipitation, atmospheric pressure, and winds and storms, but there is unity in Asia's climatic diversity that is provided by the monsoon effect. Latitudinal differences in the amount of solar energy received is the basic climatic control for Asia, extending from well above the Arctic...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Arakawa, H., 1937. The air masses of Japan, Am. Meteorol. Soc. Bull. 18, 407–410.
Arakawa, H. (ed.), 1969. Climates of Northern and Eastern Asia. World Survey of Climatology, vol. 8. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Borisov, A. A., 1965. Climates of the U.S.S.R., R. A. Ledward (trans.). Chicago: Aldine.
Bryson, R., and Murry, T. 1977. Climates of Hunger. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Budyko, M. I., 1977. Climatic Changes, American Geophysical Union (trans.). Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union.
Chang, J., 1967. The Indian summer monsoon, Geog. Rev. 57, 372–96.
Critchfield, H., 1983. General Climatology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Dando, W., 1980. The Geography of Famine. London: Edward Arnold.
Dando, W., 1983a. An Introduction to China's Diverse Physical Geographic Base. Grand Forks, N.D.: U.S. Dept. of Education, International Understanding Program.
Dando, W., 1983b. Famine in China, 1959–1961: Some geographical insights in China in Readjustment, C. K. Leung and S. S. K. Chin (eds.). Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press.
Das, P., 1968. The Monsoons. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Davydova, M., Kamenskii, A. Nekiukova, N. and Tushinskii, G. 1966. Fizicheskaia Geografiia SSSR. Moscow: Prosveshchenie.
Eagleman, J. R., 1985. Meteorology. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.
Fujita, T., 1983. On the trail of twisters, University of Chicago Mag. 75, 6–13.
Griffiths, J., and Driscoll, D. 1982. Survey of Climatology. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill.
Hsu, S. I., 1982. Tropical Cyclone in the Western North Pacific, Occasional Paper No. 24. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Geography.
Kurashima, A., 1968. Studies on the winter and summer monsoon in East Asia based on dynamic concept, Geophys. Mag. 34(2), 145–235.
Kutzbach, G., 1979. The Thermal Theory of Cyclones. Boston: American Meteorological Society.
Lydolph, P.E., 1977. Climates of the Soviet Union. World Survey of Climatology, vol. 7. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Magono, C., 1980. Thunderstorms. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Masatoshi, M., and Urushibara, R. 1981. Regionality of Climatic Change in East Asia, GeoJournal 5, 121–132.
Meigs, P., 1953. World distribution of arid and semiarid homoclimates, in Reviews of Research on Arid Zone Hydrology. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 203–209.
Miller, A., Thompson, J. Peterson, R. and Haragan, D. 1983. Elements of Meteorology. 4th ed. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill.
Oliver, J. 1984. Climatology. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill.
Noveck, S., 1959. Russian-English Glossary of Physics of Fluids and Meteorology. New York: Interlanguage Dictionaries.
Reiter, E., 1967. Jet Streams. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books.
Riehl, H., 1979. Climate and Weather in the Tropics. London: Academic Press.
Sulakvelidze, G., 1969. Rainstorms and Hail. I. Shechtman (trans.). Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations.
Takahashi, K., and Arakawa, H. 1981. Climates of Southern and Western Asia. World Survey of Climatology, vol. 9. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Trewartha, G. T., 1981. The Earth's Problem Climates, 2nd ed. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Trewartha, G., and Horn, L. 1980. An Introduction to Climate. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Tsuchiya, I., 1964. The Climate of Asia. World Climatology, vol. 1. Tokyo: Kokon Shoin.
Tu, C., 1939. Chinese air mass properties. Q. Jour. Royal Meteorol. Soc. 65, 33–51.
Yoshimura, M., 1971. Regionality of secular variation in precipitation over monsoon Asia and its relation to general circulation, in Water Balance of Monsoon Asia, M. Yoshino, (ed.). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, pp. 195–215.
Yoshino, M. (ed.), 1984. Climate and Agricultural Land Use in Monsoon Asia. Tokyo: University of Tokyo.
Cross-references
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1987 Van Nostrand Reinhold
About this entry
Cite this entry
Dando, W.A. (1987). Asia, climate of . In: Climatology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30749-4_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30749-4_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-87933-009-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30749-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive