Imagine a place with no seasons. Where every day seems like the last.
A place where it rains almost every day. A place of constant heat, and humidity.
Some might call such a place a hell, while for others, it might be paradise.
It is a place on earth with more species of plants and animals than anywhere else.
Because of the oxygen generated by its millions of trees, it has been dubbed the lungs of the world.
You have arrived at the band encircling the centre of the Earth. Welcome to the Tropical Rainforest.
We begin our journey through Earth's climate zones here, because here is the very centre of the Earth, the equator. And it is no accident that such a hot and wet climate exists on the equator, because it is here that the sun is strongest, striking the earth directly at 90 degrees. And as it does so, it causes the hot air to rise, pulling in moisture from the surrounding seas. As this humid air rises up into the high atmosphere, it cools. But cool air cannot hold onto moisture like warm air can, and so that moisture precipitates out into vast, towering thunder clouds, which then finally release as torrential rain. And it is because of its central position, on the equator, that little to no change in temperature is experienced throughout the year.
While more northerly and southerly latitude experience the colder and hotter seasons, life on the equator is about watching the sun drift slightly north and slightly south of being directly overhead. In any position, it is still beating down, producing that heat, and the thermals that produce all that rain. There is more complexity to this of course… some areas on the equator experience wet and dry seasons, but we'll cover and explain this more in the following video, which concerns the Tropical Monsoon and Tropical Savannah.
So, what kind of vegetation do we find here? Well… tropical rainforest, funnily enough. But what is it? Rainforests occur in other parts of the world – forests that grow in areas of very high rainfall. But the tropical rainforest has a unique combination of high rainfall and high temperature, which results in the most vigorous plant growth to be found anywhere on the planet.
In terms of sheer biomass, this growth most notably occurs in the form of evergreen hardwood trees, meaning dense, hard wood, like mahogany, teak, sandalwood and rosewood. But unlike the hardwoods of more temperate latitudes, these trees retain their leaves, and grow, all year round. A diverse array of plants grow in the shade below the thick tree canopy, and this further leads to a huge number of animal species in all classes - insects, arachnids, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Spend a night in a tent here and… well you'll soon get to know some of these guys.
