Monsoons Facts for Kids: Monsoons are tricky! Although we know when we should expect them, they come with different identity in every part of the world.
Monsoons are known for rain, wind, and thunderstorms, but monsoons aren’t storms. Monsoons are seasonal changes in wind that change the way the weather works for different places around the world. They are caused by the temperature of the air above the ocean cooling down faster than the air over the land. The hot air over the land rises and the cold air blows into its place causing a lot of wind. Monsoon seasons are also very warm even though they bring rain, the weather is hot and wet.
Monsoon seasons are caused by the change in temperature so when the temperature changes again the monsoon goes back the other way. This happens around every 6 months and means that all the monsoon winds change direction and the lands affected by the monsoon get less rain, storms, and wind after the monsoon season.
Monsoons aren’t all bad as some people have found a way to use monsoon rain to help them grow crops. Most of the water used to grow crops in India is provided by a monsoon that happens between April and October. This is used as a form of irrigation. Irrigation is a system to water plants to grow food. In India they use monsoon rain water to grow crops such as rice, wheat, and pulses. This system can have problems when there is less rain than expected but it is very important to farmers in India.
Mausim is an Arabic word which means season or weather. This is the perfect name for monsoons as they are a season of different weather. The word probably comes from Arabic because Arabia is affected by monsoons so they had to create a word for it. The word later became moncao which is a Portuguese word before finally being pronounced and said monsoon after the 16th century.
There isn’t just one monsoon, they affect many places at different times of the year. There are 8 monsoons that happen every year on Earth they are located in:
North America, North Africa, India, East Asia, The Western North Pacific, South America, South Africa and Australia. That’s a lot of monsoons and each place has their own monsoon season when they are affected by it because of the changing direction of the wind.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about monsoon as much as we loved teaching you about it. Now that you know how majestic the monsoons are, you can move on to learn more about our amazing Earth like: Wind, Earthquakes, Tornadoes and Rain.
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