Although this climate classification only covers a small portion of the Earth's surface, alpine climates are widely distributed. They are present in the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, Gansu, Qinghai, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Cantabrian Mountains and the Sierra Nevada in Eurasia, the Andes in South America, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade Mountains, the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains, and the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt in North America, the Southern Alps in New Zealand, the Snowy Mountains in Australia, high elevations in the Atlas Mountains and the Eastern Highlands of Africa, and the central parts of Borneo and New Guinea and the summit of Mauna Loa in the Pacific.