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Asked by beccawilko to Angus, Christian, Hannah, Laura, Simon on 25 Jun 2013.
Question: Why is the desert hot
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Angus Ferraro answered on 25 Jun 2013:
A desert is just any place where very little rain (or snow) falls. Most of these places are close to the Equator. This means the Sun is stronger there than it is here in the UK, and deserts such as the Sahara get very hot. Also, there is no water around to evaporate. Evaporation takes heat energy out of the air, so dry places tend to be hot. That’s one reason why, on a hot day, it tends to be a bit cooler near large bodies of water.
Deserts actually get cold at night. This is because sand doesn’t hold heat very long and there are no clouds to trap the heat near the surface.
In many ways Antarctica is actually a desert, because although it’s very cold, it’s also very dry! There’s plenty of ice, but it rarely snows and there is no liquid water at all!
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Laura Roberts Artal answered on 25 Jun 2013:
Not all deserts are hot, the definition of a desert isn’t that it’s hot, it actually just has to be very dry!
The main reason deserts are so hot is because they have no water. This means there is no water to be evaporated into the atmosphere and so no clouds and storms can be generated. Because there is no rainfall, there is very little vegetation. When plats breath they give out water too, and because there are so few, there is even less chance of clouds to form.
At night, deserts can be very very cold too! Clouds act as a lid and trap heat that is radiated from the ground. As deserts have so few clouds, the heat is lost easily and at night the temperatures drop quite low. -
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