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thumb The term Northern Australia is generally known to include two states and territories, being Queensland and the Northern Territory (NT). The part of Western Australia (WA) north of latitude 26° south—a definition widely used in law and State government policy—is also usually included. The 26th Parallel also defines the southern border of the NT, whereas much of the southern border of Queensland is defined by 29° south. Although it comprises about half of the total area of Australia, Northern Australia includes only about one quarter of the Australian population. However, it includes several sources of Australian exports, being coal from the Great Dividing Range in Queensland/New South Wales and the natural gas and iron ore of the Pilbara region in WA. It also includes major natural tourist attractions, such as Uluru (Ayers Rock), the Great Barrier Reef and the Kakadu National Park. ==Geography and climate== Almost all of Northern Australia is a huge ancient craton that has not experienced geological upheaval since the end of the Precambrian. The only exception to this generalisation is the Wet Tropics of northern Queensland, where active volcanoes have been present as recently as the Pleistocene. The vast craton in the north and west contains a number of quite rugged mountain ranges, of which the highest are the MacDonnell and Musgrave Ranges on the southern border of the Northern Territory. These rise to over , but the most spectacular features are the deep gorges of rivers such as the Finke. Most of the craton, however, is distinctly flat and generally low-lying with an average elevation of around , whilst in the Lake Eyre Basin most of the land is not far above sea level. The climate of the north of Australia ranges from arid (Köppen BWh) in the south to monsoonal (Köppen Aw) in the Top End and Kimberley. On the eastern coast, however, the climate is much more humid and ranges from humid sub-tropical (Köppen Cfa around Brisbane and Cwa further north) to humid tropical (Köppen Am and Af) in the Wet Tropics. Except in the western part of the Pilbara and Gascoyne where the heaviest rain often occurs from May to July under northwest cloudbands, rainfall is heavily concentrated in the "summer" months from November to March. For instance, in Burketown, the months May to September are rainless in over fifty percent of years, with over eighty percent of Augusts having no rain.〔Willcocks, Jacqui; Queensland's rainfall history: graphs of rainfall averages, 1880-1988; published 1991 by Queensland Department of Primary Industries〕 Temperatures in summer are generally unpleasantly hot apart from the eastern coastal belt. Maximum temperatures elsewhere between October and April range from in the south in April to around in the inland Pilbara and Kimberley before the wet season breaks. Further north, maxima are consistently around but extreme humidity makes conditions very unpleasant. On the coast, maxima in January range from in the south to , with minima generally around . In July, temperatures show a wider range, from in the north to around in the south, where minima can be as low as in Alice Springs in June and July. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Northern Australia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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