Taiwan Geography, Climate & Nature

Taiwan lies about 180 kilometres off the Chinese coast, on the boundary between the Philippine Sea and Eurasian plates. That collision is still happening, which is why an island only 394 kilometres long has more than two hundred peaks above three thousand metres and why it shakes regularly.

A mountain spine

The Central Mountain Range runs almost the full length of the island, with Yushan at 3,952 metres the highest peak in north-east Asia — higher than anything in Japan or the Philippines. The mountains take up roughly two thirds of the land area and drop steeply to the Pacific on the eastern side.

West and east

The western third is alluvial plain, and it holds the great majority of the twenty-three million population, the farmland, the industry and the high-speed line. The east is a narrow strip between the mountains and the sea, with the East Rift Valley running behind it along the plate boundary, and it is the emptiest and most spectacular part of the island.

Tropic of Cancer

The line crosses Taiwan near Chiayi and Hualien, marked by monuments in both places, which makes the south genuinely tropical and the north subtropical.

Earthquakes and hot springs

The same tectonics produce both. The 1999 Jiji earthquake killed more than two thousand people and reshaped building codes; the 2024 Hualien quake was the strongest in twenty-five years. The upside is more than a hundred hot spring sites, including one of very few saltwater springs anywhere, at Green Island.

The outlying islands

Penghu in the strait, Kinmen and Matsu a few kilometres off mainland China, and Green Island and Orchid Island out in the Pacific.

The Tropic of Cancer crosses Taiwan near Chiayi, which splits the island into a subtropical north and a tropical south — and in winter the difference is large enough to be worth planning around.

Summer

From May to September the lowlands are hot and humid, regularly above 33°C with high humidity, and the cities are uncomfortable in the middle of the day. May and June bring the meiyu, the plum rains, which are heavy and persistent.

Winter, north and south

From December to February the north-east monsoon brings cool, grey, drizzly weather to Taipei and the north coast — around 15°C and damp for weeks at a time. The same months in Kaohsiung, Tainan and Kenting are warm, dry and sunny. If you are travelling in winter, go south.

Altitude

Temperature drops about six degrees per thousand metres, so the high mountains are cold year round and get snow between December and March. Hehuanshan draws crowds of Taiwanese who have never otherwise seen snow, and mountain roads close for it.

Typhoons

The season runs from July to October, with three or four storms affecting the island in a typical year. They generally approach from the south-east and strike the east coast first. When a typhoon day is declared, work, schools and transport stop; the system is well organised and the practical effect on a trip is a lost day or two rather than danger.

The best of it

October and November are reliably the finest months — dry, clear and warm without the heat — followed by March and April.

Taiwan is small, extremely vertical and biologically unusual because of it. The island is only 394 kilometres long, sits on the collision between the Philippine Sea and Eurasian plates, and holds more than two hundred peaks above three thousand metres — so it stacks tropical lowland forest, subtropical broadleaf, temperate cloud forest and near-alpine vegetation within a day's drive of each other. Yushan reaches 3,952 metres, the highest point in north-east Asia.

The consequence is endemism on a scale a European country of this size never approaches. Over 4,000 species of plants are indigenous to Taiwan and over 1,000 of them are found nowhere else in the world. The mountain forests are the most distinctive: Formosan cypress and Taiwan fir are endemic conifers, and camphor laurel was once widespread at lower altitudes before the industry that took its name stripped it out.

The Tropic of Cancer crosses the island near Chiayi, which is a real biological boundary and not only a line on a map: the northern half is subtropical and the southern half tropical, and the reefs and national park around Kenting in the far south belong to a different world from the drizzly hills above Taipei.

The mountains are also why the island's protected areas work. National park permits exist partly for conservation and partly so that someone knows where walkers are, and the high country is genuinely remote despite being an hour from a high-speed rail station.

Taiwan's wildlife is a study in what island isolation does over a few million years, and in what industrialisation does over a century. Before the island industrialised, the mountainous areas held a set of endemic animals and subspecies — Swinhoe's pheasant, the Taiwan blue magpie, the Formosan sika deer among them. A few are now extinct and many of the rest are formally designated as protected.

The birds are the reliable reward and the reason serious birders come. The Taiwan blue magpie is the one visitors remember: long-tailed, loud, and common enough in the right hill forest to be seen on a day trip from Taipei. Swinhoe's pheasant is the harder prize, and the mid-altitude forest roads are where to look for it.

The Formosan sika deer is the conservation story. It was hunted out of the wild and survived only in captivity before reintroduction, which is the same shape of story as the Iberian lynx or the Mauritius kestrel and just as hard-won.

Practically, Taiwan is a walking-and-watching destination rather than a large-mammal one. The mid-altitude forest roads in the morning, the national parks with a permit, and the east coast for whales and dolphins in summer are what the island actually offers, and they are better than the numbers suggest because so much of the high country was never cleared.