Largest temperate rainforest

Temperate rainforests, which exist outside of the Earth’s tropics, generally form where relatively warm ocean temperatures impact inland climates, and they have a much greater seasonal variation than tropical rainforests. The largest expanse of temperate rainforest on Earth is the Pacific Temperate Rainforests, which cover around 295,000 square km of the west coasts of the USA and Canada. These forests are only around a few thousand years old, having formed after the last ice age.

Temperate rainforests also occur in northwestern Europe, southeastern Asia and southwestern South America as well as in New Zealand and Australia.