To travel is a great way to see new things, not only new things in new places, but also new things in places you have known for many years. I just got back to Sweden after a two months trip to South America. I visited the Atacama desert in the northern parts of Chile, and Santa Catarina in the southern parts of Brazil. I am overwhelmed by the differences between the places I've seen: On the west coast of South America, the driest desert on earth, and on the east coast, flooding that killed about 1000 people.
Some parts of the Atacama desert are arguably the driest places on earth. I took the photo below because I was stunned: the place looked just like Mars. Funnily enough, the place also seem to attract astrobiologists due to its high similarities to Mars (see reference).
What makes the Atacama Desert so dry? The area is blocked from moisture from the Andes mountains in the east and from the Chilean Coast Range in the west. The Humboldt current and the anticyclone of the Pacific also contribute to keep the Atacama Desert dry. The Humboldt current is a cold, low-salitary ocean current that flows northwest-wards along the coast, from the southern tip of Chile and up to northern Peru. The Humboldt current doesn't only contribute to the dryness of Atacama with the inversion layer it creates (the inversion layer refers to the increase of temperature with altitude), the Humbolt Current Large Marine ecosystem is one of the major upwelling systems of the world and provides the coast with amazing seafood (upwelling is a wind driven motion of dense, cool, usually nutrition rich water towards the surface)! The Atacama Desert is so rough and unfriendly, and it's amazingly beautiful in its vastness, but what impresses me most is the contrast to the east cost of South America, of which I will write next time.
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