Page:Hunt - The climate and weather of Australia - 1913.djvu/68

Rh The proposed scheme may be tabulated as follows:

These subdivisions are shown in Fig. 58.

This comprises the whole of Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn, together with Southern Queensland and the north of New South Wales,. [sic] The heaviest rains are in January and February. They are directly due to the indraught caused by the heating of the centre of the continent. This leads to the formation of a locus of low pressure (monsoonal depression) in Northern Australia, and the ascending winds are cooled and deposit their water vapour in heavy rain storms and thunder showers.

Over the greater portion of the area the winter is usually quite dry, and practically the whole of the rain falls in three or four months. But in the east, owing to two special controls, the rain is much more abundant and uniform. Along the Queensland coast the land rises to considerable heights, and there is a very permanent onshore wind the South-east Trade. This leads to a rainfall of over an inch each month in the winter, while the rest of the summer rain region is receiving nothing. It seems worth while therefore to separate this eastern fringe as a subdivision of the summer rain (or monsoon) region.

Meteorological data are given in the following table for type stations in this region: