GOBI DESERT

The Gobi Mongolian: Говь, Govi, "semidesert"; Chinese: ; pinyin: Gēbì  is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North China Plain to the southeast. The Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road.

The Gobi is made up of several distinct ecological and geographic regions based on variations in climate and topography. One is the Eastern Gobi desert steppe ecoregion, a Palearctic ecoregion in the deserts and xeric shrublands biome, home to the Bactrian camel and various other animals. It is a rain shadow desert formed by the Himalaya range blocking rain-carrying clouds from the Indian Ocean from reaching the Gobi territory.

The Gobi measures over 1,600 km 1,000 mi from southwest to northeast and 800 km 500 mi from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the line joining the Lake Bosten and the Lop Nor 87°-89° east. It occupies an arc of land 1,295,000 km2 500,000 sq mi in area as of 2007; it is the fifth-largest desert in the world and Asia's largest. Much of the Gobi is not sandy but has exposed bare rock.

The Gobi has several different Chinese names, including, a generic term for deserts  and, In its broadest definition, the Gobi includes the long stretch of desert and semi-desert area extending from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° east, to the Greater Khingan Mountains, 116°-118° east, on the border of Manchuria; and from the foothills of the Altay, Sayan, and Yablonoi mountain ranges on the north to the Kunlun, Altyn-Tagh, and Qilian mountain ranges, which form the northern edges of the Tibetan Plateau, on the south. citation needed

Gobi desert near Dunhuang

A relatively large area on the east side of the Greater Khingan range, between the upper waters of the Songhua Sungari and the upper waters of the Liao-ho, is reckoned to belong to the Gobi by conventional usage. Some geographers and ecologists prefer to regard the western area of the Gobi region as defined above: the basin of the Tarim in Xinjiang and the desert basin of Lop Nor and Hami Kumul, as forming a separate and independent desert, called the Taklamakan Desert.

Archeologists and paleontologists have done excavations in the Nemegt Basin in the northwestern part of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, which is noted for its fossil treasures, including early mammals, dinosaur eggs, and prehistoric stone implements, some 100,000 years old. Citation needed.

Climate;

The Gobi is a cold desert, with frost and occasionally snow occurring on its dunes. Besides being quite far north, it is also located on a plateau roughly 910–1,520 metres 2,990–4,990 ft above sea level, which contributes to its low temperatures. An average of approximately 194 millimetres 7.6 in of rain falls annually in the Gobi. Additional moisture reaches parts of the Gobi in winter as snow is blown by the wind from the Siberian Steppes. These winds cause the Gobi to reach extremes of temperature ranging from –40°C  –40°F in winter to +50°C 122°F in summer

The climate of the Gobi is one of great extremes, combined with rapid changes of temperature of as much as 35 °C 63 °F. These can occur not only seasonally but within 24 hours.