page_title: Madagascar
section_title: Climate
hierarchical_section_title: Madagascar / Geography / Climate
caption_attribution_description: English: Timetable summarizing major paleogeographical and paleoclimatic events relevant to the biogeographic history of Madagascar. Table includes a non-exhaustive summary of vertebrate taxa that arrived or were present on the island during four major intervals (as in [13]; herein, taxa from the second and third period were merged for analysis). The box for the Jurassic-Cretaceous shows extinct fossil taxa that were present in Madagascar in the Late Cretaceous, plus extant taxa reconstructed to have existed during this time. Subsequent boxes show taxa that are estimated to have arrived on the island during the respective interval, with each image representing one (or rarely two) endemic Malagasy clades. Extinct taxa are marked with † (in parentheses if taxon is extinct on Madagascar but surviving elsewhere). Red font marks taxa that might be of younger origin according to some molecular estimates. Maps show changing landmass configurations and patterns of vertebrate appearance in or colonization of Madagascar by time slice and proportion of dominant colonizer types (unadjusted frequencies in percent, after [13]).
context_page_description: Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, and previously known as the Malagasy Republic, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately 400 kilometres off the coast of East Africa. At 592,800 square kilometres Madagascar is the world's second-largest island country. The nation comprises the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent around 88 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation. Consequently, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot; over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth. The island's diverse ecosystems and unique wildlife are threatened by the encroachment of the rapidly growing human population and other environmental threats.
  The archaeological evidence of the earliest human foraging on Madagascar may date up to 10,000 years ago. Human settlement of Madagascar occurred between 350 BC and 550 AD by Indianized Austronesian peoples, arriving on outrigger canoes from Indonesia.
context_section_description: The combination of southeastern trade winds and northwestern monsoons produces a hot rainy season (November–April) with frequently destructive cyclones, and a relatively cooler dry season (May–October). Rain clouds originating over the Indian Ocean discharge much of their moisture over the island's eastern coast; the heavy precipitation supports the area's rainforest ecosystem. The central highlands are both drier and cooler while the west is drier still, and a semi-arid climate prevails in the southwest and southern interior of the island.
  Tropical cyclones cause damage to infrastructure and local economies as well as loss of life. In 2004, Cyclone Gafilo became the strongest cyclone ever recorded to hit Madagascar. The storm killed 172 people, left 214,260 homeless and caused more than US$250 million in damage.
caption: Biogeographic timetable of Madagascar over the last 200 million years
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