The Pangaean megamonsoon
A single continent creates a single, violent weather system, and the interior becomes desert.
- When
- Known to
- ± 10 million years
- Era
- Permian, Paleozoic
With all the land joined pole to pole, seasonal heating drives a monsoon circulation of continental scale — torrential rain on the coasts, and a vast arid interior thousands of kilometres from any ocean. Red beds, dune sandstones and evaporites accumulate across what is now Europe and North America. It is the most extreme continental climate the planet has known.