VI 



^^'^'^"I'lC iiND BIOTIC FEATURES OF T]HE SUDAN 



CLIMATE* 



+ oo3 "f^' entirely within the tropics from latitudes 22°!^. 

 to 3;^. and with a simple topography from the meterological aspect. 

 IS almost entirely landlocked and possesses a continental climate. 

 Maritime characteristics are confined to the narrow eastern coastal 

 plain and eastern slopes of the Red Sea Hills. Elsewhere the vast 

 plain is broken only by the Marra Mountains of Darfur, the Nuba 

 Mountains of southern Kordofan, (and the few small ranges of Bqua. 

 toria). The swampy Sudd of the Upper Nile is the only inland body 

 of water large enough to influence climate. The Sudanese plain 

 extends far west and north, but eastward and southward it is linu 

 ited by the Ethiopian, East Africa, and Congo highlands. 



Mean annual isotherms, or lines of equal temperature, in the 

 Sudan (Figure 323) range from 25°C. to 29OC. Temperatures in this 

 figure are not reduced to a standard level and caution is necessary 

 in dealing with these due to relatively small amount of available 

 data. 



In the north and the Red Sea area, the highest mean maxima 

 occur m June or July; these are in the range of a.l°C. to 

 43.8 C. Elsewhere they precede the rains and vary from May at 

 Khartoum to January in Bquatoria; these range from 36.9OC. to 

 40.9"C. in the plains and less in highland localities. The low- 

 est n^an maxima occur in January in the north and during the 

 rains, July or August, south of about U°N. Seasonal variation 

 decreases from north to south. The highest daily maxima (37.5'^. 

 to 52.5°C. at Wadi Haifa) occur in the north, the lowest in the 

 south (36.7^C. to A3.7°C. at Juba). 



*This section is abstracted from Ireland (1948) in Agriculture 

 in the Sudan. 



_ 831 - 



