Mondo Knows Facts
The Gobi is a cold desert made by distance
The plateau lies so far inland that monsoon moisture is gone before the air arrives The Gobi stretches across Mongolia and northern China and covers about 1.3 million square kilometres. Its name comes from a Mongolian word for a gravelly, waterless place, which describes much of the surface better than sand does. Winter temperatures drop far below freezing and snow occasionally falls on the dunes. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
The Thar Desert marks the edge of the monsoonThe Aravalli hills and a weakening monsoon leave north-west India and Sindh dryThe Sonoran is the wettest desert on EarthTwo separate rainy seasons support trees, large cacti and animals found in few other desertsThe Patagonian Desert lies in the Andes rain shadowWesterly winds drop their moisture on the mountains, leaving the eastern plains dryThe Kalahari is not quite a true desertIt gets enough rain to grow grass and trees, so many classify it as dry savannaAntarctica is technically the largest desert on EarthAntarctica receives an average of less than 200 millimetres of precipitation each year along its coast and far less inland.The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the worldSpanning over nine million square kilometres, the Sahara covers much of North Africa.
🗺️ World Geographyfact 117 of 200
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Tags: deserts, asia, climate
The Gobi is a cold desert made by distance: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The plateau lies so far inland that monsoon moisture is gone before the air arrives. The figure is taken from CIA World Factbook, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.