Bad weather in a year.

Africa is a arid and barren land, but now there is a place more arid than Africa. Do you know where it is?

It is the Atacama desert in the middle of the west coast of South America.

How dry is the Atacama Desert? What the hell happened in the desert? What is the reason for its drought? How can people live if it doesn't rain here?

In this place where it doesn't rain all the year round, the locals don't even know what an umbrella raincoat is. Next, let's take a look at this place called the world drought pole, which is considered to be the most like the moon.

Atacama Desert is a desert area between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, with a north-south span of about1100km and an area of about181300km2.

Most of them are located in Chile, with a few in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina.

When it comes to the size of the desert, Atacama Desert is hardly a name. The Sahara desert in the world covers an area of 9.32 million square kilometers, and the Atacama desert is not even a fraction of it.

But even such a small desert is called the world drought pole.

According to the survey, the core area of Atacama Desert has been in a state of extreme drought for the past150,000 years. There has been no obvious precipitation in recent 400 years, and the average precipitation in the whole desert is 0. 1 mm.

During the period of 1845- 1936, Atacama desert created the longest drought record in the world, and there was no rain in 9 1 year.

According to the investigation of geologists, it is found that Atacama Desert contains desert, plateau, salt mine and volcano.

These unique geology are actually formed by sand, salt and soil in the desert under the influence of wind, water and crustal movement for 23 million years.

The geological environment of this place is exactly the same as the surface of the moon that humans have explored, so people call it "Moon Valley", which attracts many tourists every year.

There are a lot of salt layers in the Moon Valley. Under the erosion of rain for thousands of years, these salt layers gradually accumulated in this place, forming sparkling salt crystals on the land.

In fact, Atacama Desert is the closest natural environment to Mars in the world. The extreme desert climate makes it impossible for many bacteria to live here.

Once, when NASA tested the latest space rover, the test site was the Atacama desert, the arid pole of the world.

Scientists believe that in addition to the desert surrounding environment like Mars, its climate is also very similar to Mars.

When the rover is driving on Mars, if it encounters sudden climate change, it can also be handled according to its connection in the desert.

In this respect, Atamaka Desert can be said to have high scientific value.

Arguably, the Atacama Desert lies between south latitude 18-28, although it belongs to a region with less precipitation, it is not without a drop. So what stopped the rain in Atacama Desert?

It turns out that the culprit is actually the Andes. When we see the deserts in China, we know that most deserts are formed because of the obstacles of mountains.

Water vapor from the eastern Atlantic Ocean and humid water vapor from the southern Amazon are basically absent in desert areas.

In fact, in these areas with less precipitation, there is still occasional precipitation, but there is no precipitation in Atacama Desert.

Water vapor from the east and south, with an average height of 3660 kilometers in the Andes, is almost difficult to climb over the hillside to rain on the other side of the mountain.

In addition, driven by aerodynamics, the desert is still in a high pressure area, and the airflow is very easy to sink, so it is naturally difficult for water vapor to condense here, so there is less precipitation.

When it passes through the desert, the Peru cold current, known as the most powerful and famous recharge flow, will make the water in the desert area very little, and under the action of offshore wind, the precipitation in Atacama desert will be even less.

It stands to reason that in such an extremely arid area, few people should be able to survive here.

Even in the center of the Sahara desert, the annual precipitation is less than 100 mm, so it is uninhabited.

However, in this area of 10 square kilometers, there are still about 1 10,000 people. Because the precipitation here is very scarce, the locals don't even know what umbrellas and raincoats are. How did they survive here?

Living in a desert area, the most important thing is to use water. Local residents use two methods to obtain daily water, namely "air catching water" net and "plastic film" water intake device.

Tuhenna, the southernmost tip of Peru, is located in the Atacama desert. There is almost no rain here all year round, and even if there is, it does not exceed 30 mm.

But the residents here don't seem to lack water. According to research, this area is affected by the Peruvian cold current and offshore wind, and the air humidity exceeds 80%.

There will be foggy weather for at least eight months every year, so in order to get fresh water, local residents thought of laying a large net in the air, so that the fog would condense into water droplets after meeting the large net, and then slowly stay along the large net and then stay in the water pipe for residents to use.

It is understood that a 20-square-meter net can condense 200-400 liters of fresh water every day, which is actually enough for a family to use one day.

In order to reserve more water sources, local people constantly improve their water-catching nets in order to collect more water sources.

Today, in Peru alone, there are more than 1500 mist collectors, which have solved the water problem of more than 60,000 people.

Local residents are still trying to use this kind of water catching net to plant fruit trees in the desert and turn the desert into an oasis.

Except for the foggy weather for more than 8 months, local residents need to find ways to solve the problem of how to use water for the remaining 100 days.

At this time, they thought of using the principle of water circulation to obtain fresh water with plastic films.

In fact, we have learned this method in geography class, and some friends living in the countryside should have seen such a scene.

Dig a hole one meter square in the ground, put a water container in it, then cover it with plastic film, press it around with mud, and then put a stone in the middle of the film to let the center of the film sink in.

Under the sunshine, the water vapor in the bunker is evaporated and then slowly condenses on the plastic film, but this effect is generally slow, and only one or two liters of water can be collected every day.

However, in recent years, the drought pole in the world has suffered a once-in-a-century rainfall event.

In 20 15, under the influence of El Nino, the Atacama desert actually ushered in a heavy rain, and even opened a large sea of flowers in the desert area.

Then there were 20 15 and 20 17 heavy rainfall. It is reasonable to say that precipitation occurs in such an extremely dry area.

It should be a good thing to have rain after a long drought, but scientists believe that such heavy rainfall may bring a disaster.

After finding three rainfalls, the rain will gather in the low-lying lake.

Although we say that the topography of Atacama desert is like the moon and the climate is like Mars, the difference is that this desert can still support the survival of microorganisms.

In such a dry environment, bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes can generally survive.

Heavy rainfall will not make these microorganisms live better, because they have adapted to the arid living environment for tens of thousands of years.

Therefore, these three heavy rains have wiped out 85% of the species in the desert, and now there are only four kinds of microorganisms left in the lake.

And almost every time after El Nino, there will be heavy rainfall, and such extreme weather itself is the embodiment of the deterioration of the earth's environment.

The more this phenomenon happens, the worse the climate and environment of the earth will become, so it is difficult for even the desert with long drought to benefit from precipitation.