Tropic of Capricorn years. In South America, whilst in the continental cratons soils are almost as old as in Australia and Southern Africa, the presence of the geologically young and evolving Andes means that this region is on the western side of the subtropical anticyclones and thus receives warm and humid air from the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, areas in Brazil adjacent to the Tropic are extremely important agricultural regions, producing large quantities of crops such as sugarcane, and the natural rainforest vegetation has been almost entirely cleared, except for a few remaining patches of Atlantic Forest. Further south in Argentina, the
Tropic of Capricorn was named in the last centuries BC, the Sun was in the constellation Capricornus (Latin for "goat horn") at the December solstice, the time each year that the Sun reaches its zenith at this latitude. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, this is no longer the case; today the Sun is in Sagittarius at the December solstice. The word "tropic" itself comes from the Greek "trope (τροπή)", meaning to turn or change direction, referring to the fact that the Sun appears to "turn back" at the solstices. The Tropic of Capricorn is the dividing line between the Southern Temperate