South America Climate Patterns

South America spans nearly every climate zone that exists, a direct result of its huge range of latitude and altitude. Near the equator, the Amazon Basin is uniformly hot and humid year-round, with a wet and a slightly-less-wet season rather than a true dry one. Moving south, climates shift through subtropical (southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay), temperate (central Argentina and Chile), and finally to the cold, windswept sub-polar climate of Patagonia at the continent's southern tip.

Altitude complicates this pattern significantly in the Andes: cities like La Paz, Bolivia, and Quito, Ecuador sit above 2,800 meters and have notably cool, thin-air climates despite their tropical latitude — a very different experience from lowland cities at a similar distance from the equator. Northern Chile's Atacama Desert, meanwhile, is one of the driest places on Earth, some weather stations there having never recorded measurable rainfall.

Because the continent sits mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, its seasons run opposite to North America and Europe, which matters for trip timing — see the Best Destinations By Month section for how this plays out region by region.