It’s the world’s largest weather system. Affecting almost half of the world’s population, its seasonal changes in winds and rain determine the cycles of nature and humankind, year after year. It is the story of the world’s largest continent, fighting with two oceans, played out in the atmosphere above. From the blistering heat of India, to the frigid north of Siberia, this is the Asian Monsoon.
No discussion of Earth’s climate can go without some mention of the largest single pattern of weather on the globe. Because the Asian Monsoon covers so many individual climate zones, there was no room to give it a good treatment in any of the various chapters that covered Asia in my Secrets of World Climate series. And so it gets an chapter of its own in my Climate Casebook.
