Gobi Desert
desert in China and Mongolia
The Gobi (/ˈɡoʊ.bi/; Mongolian: Говь,Govi , "semidesert"; Chinese: 戈壁; pinyin: Gēbì ) is in Mongolia and China. It is the largest desert in Asia, and the fifth largest in the world.
| Gobi Desert (Говь) | |
| Desert | |
 Gobi Desert landscape in Ömnögovi Province, Mongolia
| |
| Countries | Mongolia, China |
|---|---|
| Mongolian Aimags | Bayankhongor, Dornogovi, Dundgovi, Govi-Altai, Govisümber, Ömnögovi, Sükhbaatar |
| Chinese Autonomous Region | Inner Mongolia |
| Range | Govi-Altai Mountains |
| Landmark | Nemegt Basin |
| Length | 1,500 km (932 mi), SE/NW |
| Width | 800 km (497 mi), N/S |
| Area | 1,295,000 km² (500,002 sq mi) |
 The Gobi Desert lies in the territory of the People's Republic of China and Mongolia.
| |
The Gobi is a rain shadow desert, caused by the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas shielding it from rain.
The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North China Plain to the southeast. The Gobi is made up of several pieces of geological and geographic regions.
ClimateEdit
The Gobi is a high plateau with daily and seasonal extremes of temperature.
| Sivantse (1190 m) | Ulaanbaatar (1150 m) | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual mean | −2.5 °C (27.5 °F) | 2.8 °C (37.0 °F) |
| January mean | −26.5 °C (−15.7 °F) | −16.5 °C (2.3 °F) |
| July mean | 17.5 °C (63.5 °F) | 19.0 °C (66.2 °F) |
| Extremes | −43 to 38 °C (−45 to 100 °F) | −47 to 38.6 °C (−53 to 101 °F) |
ReferencesEdit
- Owen Lattimore. (1973) "Return to China's Northern Frontier." The Geographical Journal, Vol. 139, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 233–242.
Further readingEdit
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gobi Desert. |
- Cable, Mildred and French, Francesca (1943) The Gobi Desert London. Landsborough Publications, OCLC 411792
- Man, John (1997) Gobi: Tracking the Desert Yale University Press, New Haven, ISBN 0-300-07609-6
- Stewart, Stanley (2001) In the Empire of Genghis Khan: A Journey among Nomads Harper Collins Publishers, London, ISBN 0-00-653027-3.
- Thay'er, Helen (2007) Walking the Gobi: 1,600 Mile-trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair Mountaineer Books, Seattle, WA, ISBN 978-1-59485-064-6
- Young husband, Francis (1904) The Heart of a Continent John Murray
