16.1 16.1 Saudi Arabia
Compiled by: Eric Bird
Last revised: May 2002 ©Geostudies Pty Ltd.
16.1.1 Introduction
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a Red Sea coast about 2,000 km long and an Arabian Gulf coast about 700 km long. The Arabian Peninsula has a steep western escarpment rising to 1,500–3,000 m at the edge of a plateau that declines gradually eastward, flattening to a broad coastal plain. The escarpment crest is only 40 km inland in the north, diverging to 150 km in the south. The landscape is largely desert. Numerous short, steep wadis descend the escarpment to the Red Sea coast, generally dry and gravelly but flowing briefly and torrentially after occasional heavy rain. Longer watercourses run eastward, but there are no permanent rivers. The climate is hot and arid. Jeddah on the Red Sea coast has 23° in January and 31° in July, with a mean annual rainfall of 81 mm, and conditions are similar on the Arabian Gulf coast, where Ras Tannurah has 20° in January and 33° in July, and...
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Bird, E.C.F. (2003). South West Asia. In: Bird, E.C.F. (eds) The World’s Coasts: Online. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48369-6_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48369-6_17
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