Figure 5.15 Broad climate patterns around the world. Near the tropics, the climate is warm with high amounts of precipitation. The world’s great deserts are near 30° N and 30° S latitudes. Cold and snowy polar regions are located at even higher latitudes. In addition, we can see that regions of high precipitation sometimes occur on the western side of mountains, as in western Canada, and that deserts occur in the rain shadows of mountains, such as on the eastern sides of the Cascade Mountains and Sierra Nevadas in North America and the Andes Mountains in South America.