One fifth of Britons think it 'never' rains in Africa Photo: CORBIS
Almost half of UK residents claimed it “rarely snows” anywhere in France, despite the French Alps attracting millions of skiers each winter, while one in eight people believed rainforests are found in Greenland.
More than 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly stated it was “always hot” in the Sahara Desert – in fact temperatures at night often drop below freezing – and 17 per cent said there were no volcanoes on the Canary Islands.
When asked to specify the characteristics of a monsoon season, 1 in 10 people said it was “a time when birds migrate south for winter”, while 68 per cent thought there has “never” been a tornado in Britain.
“Having carried out previous research into the misconceptions of people in the UK, we were keen to look into how knowledgeable people were of climates in other countries around the world,” said Chris Brown, co-founder of Sunshine.co.uk.
A previous survey, carried out in April, revealed that 54 per cent of Britons thought Timbuktu was an imaginary place, and almost one in ten believed Kazakhstan did not exist.
More than a third claimed that Atlantis could be visited on a holiday to Greece.
In light of the new findings, Brown urged people to “do a bit of research” before venturing abroad.
