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The trade winds or easterlies are permanent east-to-west prevailing winds that flow in the Earth's equatorial region. The trade winds blow mainly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere , strengthening during the winter and when the Arctic oscillation is in its warm phase.
The westerlies (blue) and trade winds (yellow and brown) The general atmospheric circulation. Trade winds (red), westerlies (white) and the South Pacific anticyclone (blue) [1] The westerlies, anti-trades, [2] or prevailing westerlies, are prevailing winds from the west toward the east in the middle latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees latitude.
Like trade winds and unlike the westerlies, these prevailing winds blow from the east to the west, and are often weak and irregular. [15] Due to the low sun angle, cold air builds up and subsides at the pole creating surface high-pressure areas, forcing an outflow of air toward the equator; [16] that outflow is deflected westward by the ...
The trade winds act as the steering flow for tropical cyclones that form over the world's oceans. [32] Trade winds also steer African dust westward across the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean, as well as portions of southeast North America. [33] A monsoon is a seasonal prevailing wind that lasts for several months within tropical regions.
The atmospheric circulation pattern that George Hadley described was an attempt to explain the trade winds. The Hadley cell is a closed circulation loop which begins at the equator. There, moist air is warmed by the Earth's surface, decreases in density and rises.
Weaker easterly trade winds result in a surge of warm surface waters to the east and reduced ocean upwelling on the equator. In turn, this leads to warmer sea surface temperatures (called El Niño), a weaker Walker circulation (an east-west overturning circulation in the atmosphere) and even weaker trade winds. Ultimately the warm waters in the ...
Immanuel Kant, also unsatisfied with Halley's explanation for the trade winds, published an explanation for the trade winds and westerlies in 1756 with similar reasoning as Hadley. [82] In the latter part of the 18th century, Pierre-Simon Laplace developed a set of equations establishing a direct influence of Earth's rotation on wind direction ...
The second mechanism of wind currents resulting in Ekman transfer is the Trade Winds both north and south of the equator pulling surface waters towards the poles. [1] There is a great deal of upwelling Ekman suction at the equator because water is being pulled northward north of the equator and southward south of the equator.