Abstract Climate has a pervasive effect on sedimentation today, and the same climatic patterns are reflected in the distribution of lithofacies through the Palaeozoic, as the continents migrate beneath the climatic zones. The low-latitude hot wet zone is represented by thick elastics, coals and carbonates and is best developed along east coasts where prevailing winds bring moisture and heated surface waters toward the continent. The desert zones occur on the west sides of continents centred at 20° north and south, and these dry belts are represented in the geological record by evaporites. Tillites, thick elastics and coals occur in the temperate rainy belts, especially on the windward, west sides of continents above 40° latitude. Continental accretion occurs where subduction zones coincide with rainy zones, such that the products of erosion are transported to the trench, and thus thrust back, extending the margin of the continent. The opposite process of ‘tectonic erosion’, wherein the descending oceanic slab continually ‘rasps’ away the margin of the continental crust, may occur in areas where rainfall and surface run-off is insufficient to provide trench sediments. This process has been operating adjacent to the Atacama Desert in South America during the past 200 Ma. To judge by the eastward migration of the calc-alkaline intrusive foci, about 250 km of the margin of South America have been transported down the subduction zone during this period.