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Arid Climates and Indicators

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Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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The nature of aridity

Arid lands cover about a third of the Earth's land surface and occur in every continent including Antarctica (Goudie, 2002). They are areas where there is a severe shortage of moisture, predominantly because precipitation levels are low. In some years they may even receive no rain at all. In some deserts, aridity is in part also the result of high temperatures, which means that evaporation rates are great (Mainguet, 1999).

Definitions of aridity relate to the water balance concept. This is a relationship that exists between the input of water in precipitation (P), the losses arising from evaporation and transpiration (evapotranspiration) (E t ), and any changes that may occur in storage (soil moisture, groundwater, etc.). In arid regions there is an overall deficit in water balance over a year, and the size of that deficit determines the degree of aridity. The actual amount of evapotranspiration (AE t ) that occurs varies according to whether there is available...

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Authors
  1. Andrew Goudie
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, New York, USA

    Vivien Gornitz

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Goudie, A. (2009). Arid Climates and Indicators. In: Gornitz, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4411-3_13

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