What Makes an Area a Tropical Rainforest?

Tropical rainforests are forests that receive more than 203 cm of rain a year. Some rainforests receive as much as 500-1000 centimetres of rain a year! Rainforests also have large amounts of humidity or water vapour in the air.

What is the Temperature Like in a Tropical Rainforest?

The temperature in a tropical rainforest does not vary much during the year. It ranges between 21 and 26˚c at all times. Tropical rainforests never get really hot because they receive almost daily rainfall. Other areas near the equator which do not receive a great deal of rainfall have much higher average temperatures than tropical rainforests. The temperature is much the same at night as it is during the day, unlike other places where the temperature at night is much cooler than the temperature during the day. There are no seasons in the rainforest and the reason that the temperature stays the same year-round is that the lands near the equator receive the direct rays of the sun.

A Rainforest Day

Tropical rainforests have days which are evenly divided between light and darkness. This is because the tropics belt receives direct rays from the sun. Therefore, a rainforest day has 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. There are several characteristics that make an area considered to be a rainforest: they are found in the tropics belt and receive more than 150 cm of rain a year. They have days that are evenly divided between sunlight and darkness.