This map is from the lecture notes of Dr S.E Jones at The School of Ocean Sciences, University of Wales - Bangor. There is a link to it under 3) Patterns of Climate. It looks like a class I’d like to take.
Check out the green band that the circles the globe through South America, Africa, and Asia. I knew each of those places had high rainfall, but I’d never put them together before. From Jones’ notes:
Rainfall is highest near equator (rising air is warm so can store a lot of water vapour). Most tropical rainfall is convective: prolonged heavy showers and thunderstorms.
At high latitudes precipitation is low because the air is too cold to hold much water vapour. Subtropical high pressure belts have low rainfall (stable conditions due to high pressure) while northern mid-latitudes have moderate rainfall, much of it frontal, which diminishes into the interiors of North America and Asia.
He has another equally interesting animation showing temperature. I didn’t put it here because two animated gifs on one page is too many.
