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Does the amount of rainfall relate to temperatures of a place? Is the amount of rainfall related to the maximum mean temperature of a place?

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  • $\begingroup$ I would guess temperature and rainfall amount are negatively correlated (rain makes things colder?), but it would be interesting to see if anyone's done a study. $\endgroup$
    – user967
    Sep 1, 2016 at 17:43
  • $\begingroup$ There are predictions that in the future, global warming will lead to more storms as the increased amount of heat will cause more water to evaporate and thus more material for weather...however I'm not sure how it works on a local scale. $\endgroup$
    – G. Gip
    Sep 3, 2016 at 20:08

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Yes, with exceptions

Rainfall is related to temperature. However temperature is not the only thing that dictates rainfull.

In general, the more hot a place is, the more water evaporates and the more rainfall is able to be produced.

For example, the equator has a belt of rain-forests precisely because it receives the highest amount of heat from the sun and thus high amounts of rain-fall.

However, not all hot places make a lot of rain. Deserts occur when there is a lack of rain fall. Yet deserts can occur in cold temperatures (the north pole) and hot temperatures (Sahara desert).

To sum, temperature is certainly related to the amount of rainfall. However, you can't just presume the level of rainfall by temperature as many other factors are invovled.

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Assume you mean surface temperature...

I think you should not directly try to correlate temperature and precipitation together.

Both of them are, in general, determined by location, which represents solar radiation level (related to latitude), altitude, distance to nearby water bodies (source of moisture), impacts of atmospheric circulations and ocean currents, and so on.

Thus there should not exist any global correlation between these two factors.

However, in a certain area, they may be related, and I think there may exist another deterministic factor, e.g. distance towards nearby mountains.

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  • $\begingroup$ Could you please add some references please? $\endgroup$
    – L.B.
    Sep 3, 2016 at 2:02
  • $\begingroup$ Why would distance to a mountain not be a factor? Closer to a mountain, on the wind side, the more rainfall should be expected as air is forced to rise and cool, and on the other side of the mountain is bone dry. This is known as the rain shadow effect and has created the dry landscape of the tibetean plataeu $\endgroup$
    – G. Gip
    Sep 3, 2016 at 20:07
  • $\begingroup$ @G.Gip of course it is. $\endgroup$
    – CatoPX
    Sep 4, 2016 at 1:51
  • $\begingroup$ @L.B. Sorry, I don't have time, corresponding references should be easy to find by yourself. $\endgroup$
    – CatoPX
    Sep 4, 2016 at 1:52
  • $\begingroup$ Thrn why do you doubt that distance towards nearby mountains would be a deterministix factor? $\endgroup$
    – G. Gip
    Sep 4, 2016 at 6:16

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