Climate of Pakistan

The land encompasses an area from the mountains in the north to the coast of the Arabian Sea in the south, giving rise to extreme cold in the mountains to warm balmy weather near the coast. The climate is arid subtropical in general however, with under 250 mm of annual rainfall with some of the driest regions receiving less than 123 mm annually. Punjab (meaning land of 5 rivers) has some humid subtropical terrain and some southern slopes of the Himalayas are monsoon influenced. Rainfall exceeds 2000 mm annually in a few places. The south - west monsoon arrives from June to September and that is when the main rainfall occurs. Temperatures are influenced by altitude and in the period just before the monsoon temperatures in the central plains average 35-40 o C. Deserts may reach up to 45 o C. Winter temperatures in the northern mountains remain below freezing for several months of the year. (Biodiversity Guide).

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Due to large variation in climate, landform and a wide diversity of habitat Pakistan can be divided into regions and Pakistan comprises a number of ecosystems including marine, coastal, mangrove, deltaic, riverain, wetland, dry desert, tropical thorn, sub-montane, and cold desert . The Indus River zone and the Chagai Desert & Juniper forest of Balochistan are of unique ecological interest and international conservation importance.

Resources

• Land area is spread over 882,000 km 2 (88.2 million ha), and includes the Northern Areas and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

• Rainfall ranges at 30 mm annually in the Chagai and Sibi deserts. Murree receives around 1350 mm and the average in the northern areas is 2000 mm annually. 75% of the country receives less than 250 mm annually, and 90% less than 510mm per annum.

• The major freshwater supplier is the Indus, which discharges some 200 km 3 of water and 450 million tonnes of sediment annually. This creates the Indus Cone, a 2,500-m deep pile of loose sediment on the floor of the Arabian Sea.