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| | Brazil Weather
What is the weather in
Brazil?
What is climate of Brazil?
Although 90 percent of the country is within the tropical zone, the climate
of Brazil varies considerably from the mostly tropical North to temperate zones
below the Tropic of Capricorn (23°27' S latitude), which crosses the country at
the latitude of the city of São Paulo. Brazil has five climatic
regions--equatorial, tropical, semiarid, highland tropical, and subtropical.
Temperatures along the equator are high, averaging above 25°C / 77°F, but not
reaching the summer extremes of up to 40°C / 104°F in the temperate zones. At
the country's other extreme, there are frosts south of the Tropic of Capricorn
during the winter (June-August), and in some years there is snow in the
mountainous areas, such as Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Temperatures in
the cities of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília are moderate (usually
between 15°C / 59° and 30°C / 86°F), despite their relatively low latitude,
because of their elevation of approximately 1,000 meters. Rio de Janeiro,
Recife, and Salvador on the coast have warm climates, with average temperatures
ranging from 23°C / 73.4°F to 27°C / 80.6°F, but enjoy constant trade winds. The
southern cities of Porto Alegre and Curitiba have a subtropical climate similar
to that in parts of the United States and Europe, and temperatures can fall
below freezing in winter.
Precipitation levels vary widely. Most of Brazil has moderate rainfall of
between 1,000 and 1,500 millimeters a year, with most of the rain falling in the
summer (between December and April) south of the Equator. The Amazon region is
notoriously humid, with rainfall generally more than 2,000 millimeters per year
and reaching as high as 3,000 millimeters in parts of the western Amazon and
near Belém. It is less widely known that, despite high annual precipitation, the
Amazon rain forest has a three- to five-month dry season, the timing of which
varies according to location north or south of the equator.
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