Monsoons Trivia
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48 free Monsoons trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This monsoons trivia quiz covers the science and the geography of the world's great seasonal wind reversals. It starts with the basics: where the word comes from, why land heats faster than sea, what the Intertropical Convergence Zone does and why the Tibetan Plateau matters. Then it follows the South Asian monsoon from its June 1 arrival in Kerala up the Western Ghats and around the Bay of Bengal to the wettest places on Earth in the Khasi Hills, and back out again as the northeast monsoon that waters Tamil Nadu. Other questions cover the East Asian plum rains, the West African monsoon and the harmattan, Australia's Wet, the North American monsoon that turns Arizona skies black each July, and the ENSO and Indian Ocean Dipole patterns that decide whether India gets drought or flood. Numbers questions test rainfall records, the monsoon's share of India's rain and its grip on the economy. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our weather and India quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Traditionally, how is a monsoon defined?
A seasonal reversing wind
A seasonal reversing wind, with matching changes in rainfall, is the traditional definition; in everyday use the word now also means the rains those winds bring.
Q 02The English word "monsoon" ultimately derives from an Arabic word meaning what?
Season
Season: monsoon goes back to Arabic mawsim, 'season', from a verb meaning 'to mark'; it named the right time of year for a voyage or a pilgrimage.
Q 03Which language did "monsoon" pass through on its way from Arabic into English?
Portuguese
Portuguese sailors picked up the Arabic word in the Indian Ocean as monção; English took it in the 1580s by way of early Dutch monssoen.
Q 04Monsoon rains follow the yearly north–south migration of which atmospheric feature?
The Intertropical Convergence Zone
The Intertropical Convergence Zone, the rain belt where the trade winds meet, shifts north and south with the sun; monsoon rains arrive where it swings over land in summer.
Q 05Why do continents warm faster than the sea in summer, setting up monsoon winds?
Land has a lower heat capacity
Land has a lower heat capacity than water, so the same sunshine warms it faster; the sea also mixes heat tens of metres down by convection, while rock and sand only conduct it slowly.
Q 06In summer, why does the air over heated land develop low pressure?
Warm air expands and rises
Warm air expands and rises over the heated land, lowering the pressure at the surface, so cooler, moister air from over the ocean is drawn inland to replace it.
Q 07Summer monsoon winds over India, the Guinea coast and northern Australia share which dominant directional component?
Westerly
Westerly: India's and West Africa's summer monsoons blow from the southwest and northern Australia's from the northwest, so a westerly component is common to all; winter monsoons are mostly easterly and dry.
Q 08The strengthening of the Asian monsoon has been linked to the uplift of which highland region?
The Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau was pushed up after India collided with Asia about 50 million years ago; each summer the high plateau heats the air above it, which helps drive the Indian monsoon.
Q 09Which low-level wind crosses the equator off Africa to feed moisture into India's summer monsoon?
The Somali Jet
The Somali Jet, or Findlater Jet, is a narrow low-level stream that blows past Somalia and Oman each summer; the same winds push surface water offshore, so cold deep water wells up along the Somali coast.
Q 10During which months does India's southwest monsoon occur?
June to September
June to September: the rains reach India's southern coast at the start of June, take about six weeks to spread over the whole country, and begin to withdraw in September.
Q 11Which arid region's summer heating creates the low pressure that draws the monsoon into India?
The Thar Desert
The Thar Desert bakes in early summer and a deep low forms over it, pulling moist ocean air into India; yet the rain-bearing winds mostly pass the desert by, which is why it stays so dry.
Q 12What deflects the southeast trade winds into India's southwesterly monsoon once they cross the equator?
The Coriolis effect
The Coriolis effect, a product of Earth's rotation, turns moving air to the right in the northern hemisphere, so the southeast trades swing round after crossing the equator and reach India from the southwest.
Q 13Which Indian state is the first to receive rain from the southwest monsoon?
Q 21What term describes the sudden switch to rainy, humid weather when the monsoon arrives in India?
Bursting
Bursting: the 'burst' of the monsoon is the abrupt switch from hot, dry weather to rain and humidity when the moist winds arrive, which the jet-stream theory links to the subtropical jet suddenly shifting north of the mountains.
Q 22By what other name is India's northeast monsoon, which follows the summer rains, known?
The retreating monsoon
The retreating monsoon: as the southwest monsoon withdraws, cold dry air sweeps off the northern landmass towards the sea; blowing from the land, it leaves most of India dry through the cooler months.
Q 23Which Indian city is watered mainly by the northeast monsoon rather than the southwest one?
Kerala
Kerala gets the rains first because the monsoon winds coming off the sea strike its Western Ghats before any other part of the mainland.
Q 14Monsooned Malabar is which crop, left in ventilated warehouses to swell in India's moist monsoon winds?
Coffee
Coffee: on the Malabar coast, dried beans are spread in ventilated warehouses for three to four months of the rains, where the damp winds make them swell, turn pale gold and lose their acidity.
Q 15Into which two arms does the southwest monsoon split at the southern tip of India?
Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal
Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal: the Arabian Sea branch runs up the Western Ghats, while the Bay of Bengal branch swings around the bay towards the eastern Himalayas and the Ganges plain.
Q 16Which town on the southern slopes of the Khasi Hills in Meghalaya is one of the wettest places on Earth?
Mawsynram
Mawsynram sits on the rain-facing southern slopes of the Khasi Hills, where moist Bay of Bengal monsoon air is forced up the escarpment, giving it one of the highest average annual rainfalls ever measured.
Q 17The wettest spots in India's Khasi Hills average roughly how much rain a year?
About 12 metres
About 12 metres: the two rival villages each average between 11 and 12 metres a year, though Lloró in Colombia claims more, so the title of wettest place on Earth is disputed.
Q 18Which town, also called Sohra, holds the records for rain in a single month and year?
Cherrapunji
Cherrapunji, officially renamed Sohra, logged more than 26 metres of rain in the twelve months from August 1860; it sits on a plateau edge where saturated monsoon air is forced up the slope and cools at once.
Q 19Which Southeast Asian river reverses its flow each year when monsoon floods swell the Mekong?
The Tonlé Sap
The Tonlé Sap normally drains Cambodia's great lake into the Mekong; in the monsoon the swollen Mekong pushes water back up it, and the lake spreads to several times its dry-month area.
Q 20Which staple is India's main monsoon-sown crop, planted as the rains arrive?
Rice
Rice needs heavy rainfall, which is why it is India's chief kharif, or monsoon-sown, crop; wheat, by contrast, is a rabi crop, sown after the rains and harvested in spring.
Chennai
Chennai lies in the rain shadow of the Western Ghats during the southwest monsoon, so most of its rain comes from the northeast monsoon off the Bay of Bengal later in the year.
Q 24In which months does the northeast monsoon bring rain to southern India?
October to December
October to December: once the high-pressure system over the cooling northern landmass builds, northeasterly winds cross the Bay of Bengal and rain out over Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.
Q 25What is the northeast monsoon called in the Philippines?
Amihan
Amihan is the Filipino name for the cool northeast monsoon of the northern winter; it gives the islands' western coasts their dry months while the eastern coasts stay rainy. The southwest monsoon is the Habagat.
Q 26What is the East Asian summer rain belt called in China?
Meiyu
Meiyu is China's name for the front that stalls over eastern China, Taiwan and southern Japan for weeks in early summer, until the subtropical high strengthens and shoves it north; Korea calls it Jangma, Japan Bai-u or Tsuyu.
Q 27The East Asian monsoon's spring-summer rains are referred to in several languages as what kind of rain?
Plum
Plum rain: the Chinese and Japanese names both mean 'plum rain', traditionally because the damp weeks come just as plums ripen south of the Yangtze.
Q 28Which dry, dusty trade wind is interrupted by the West African monsoon each summer?
The harmattan
The harmattan, the dry northeasterly off the Sahara, gives way to moist southwesterlies as the monsoon pushes north; in its own months it carries so much dust that it grounds flights and settles on ships far out in the Atlantic.
Q 29Which semi-arid African region depends on the West African monsoon for most of its rain?
The Sahel
The Sahel, the semi-arid strip along the Sahara's southern edge, gets most of its rain from the West African monsoon; when those rains failed from 1968 into the 1980s, drought and famine followed across the region.
Q 30What Arabic name is given to the dust walls kicked up by monsoon thunderstorms in America's Southwest?
A haboob
A haboob is the wall of dust flung ahead of a collapsing thunderstorm's outflow, sometimes thousands of feet high; the name was borrowed from Sudan, where such storms are common.