Related BBC sites

Page last updated at 18:55 GMT, Tuesday, 22 March 2011
French Guiana

French Guiana

This small territory on the north coast of South America, is a French overseas département, bordered on the west by Suriname and on the south and east by Brazil. Situated between 2° and 6°N, it has an equatorial type of climate which is described in more detail for Guyana. French Guiana has a large area of lowland; the table for Cayenne on the coast is representative of a large part of the country. Here the main rainy season is from December to June and the months August to October are almost dry. This is the principal climatic difference between French Guiana and Suriname and Guyana. Otherwise temperature and humidity remain high throughout the year and there is little difference between the lowlands in all these countries. Cayenne is rather wetter, taking the year as a whole, than Georgetown in Guyana and Paramaribo in Suriname. Only a small area in the south of the country consists of upland plateau where climatic conditions are better represented by the table for Santa Elena in Venezuela.

© Copyright RM, 2007. All rights reserved. Helicon Publishing is a division of RM.



Print Sponsor




bbc.co.uk navigation

BBC © 2011

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.