World Geography / Unit 2: Physical Geography
2.4 Climate Zones and Biomes
Notes
Climates are grouped into major zones, and each supports typical plant and animal communities called biomes.
- Tropical: hot all year. Rainforest (wet all year, as in the Amazon and Congo basins) and savanna (grassland with wet and dry seasons).
- Dry: desert (very little rain, like the Sahara) and steppe (semi-dry grassland).
- Mild (temperate): Mediterranean (dry summers, mild wet winters), humid subtropical, marine west coast.
- Continental: large seasonal swings in temperature, with cold winters. Includes the northern taiga (coniferous forest).
- Polar: tundra (treeless, frozen ground called permafrost) and ice caps.
- Highland: climate changes with altitude.
Practice
Which biome is a treeless region with permafrost in the far north?
Tundra has frozen subsoil, short summers and no trees.
A region has hot weather all year and rain that falls every month. Which biome is most likely?
Rainforests are hot and wet year-round.
Warm, dry summers and mild, rainy winters are the pattern of which climate?
The Mediterranean climate is found around that sea and in places like California and central Chile.
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