12 - Dynamic interactions among desert microclimates

Summary

The desert landscape is always at its best in the half-light of dawn or dusk. The sense of distance lacks: a ridge nearby can be a far-off mountain range, each small detail can take on the importance of a major variant on the countryside's repetitious theme. The coming of day promises a change; it is only when the day has fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returning once again – the same day he has been living for a long time, over and over, still blindingly bright and untarnished by time.

Paul Bowles, American/Moroccan writer The Sheltering Sky (1949)

The desert doesn't lie; everything is there for you to see. There's even something shameless about it, the naked earth. The sand covers it in places, but apart from that its skeleton can be seen wherever you look.

Theodore Monod, French naturalist Deserts (1994)

The water reveals itself to the ground without reservation. And the dry ground waits, completely open with its bare rock and expectant passages like a lover who has no hesitation. The water tumbles wildly inside. The message is scrawled into the desert, a savage, but impeccable, signature.

Craig Childs, American naturalist and writer The Secret Knowledge of Water (2000)

The previous chapter established the existence of microclimates in deserts, where near-surface and boundary-layer properties sometimes vary greatly over short distances. This chapter will discuss the processes that can result from interactions between these contrasting microclimates.