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The driving force behind the vertical velocity is the Ekman transport, which in the Northern (Southern) hemisphere is to the right (left) of the wind stress; thus a stress field with a positive (negative) curl leads to Ekman divergence (convergence), and water must rise from beneath to replace the old Ekman layer water.
[16] [17] Wind in these regimes blows parallel to the coast (such as along the coast of Peru, where the wind blows out of the southeast, and also in California, where it blows out of the northwest). From Ekman transport, surface water has a net movement of 90° to right of wind direction in the northern hemisphere (left in the southern hemisphere).
Vertical movements occur when there is convergence and divergence at different levels of the atmosphere. For example, near the jet stream, winds increase when approaching its most intense region and decreases when it moves away. Thus, there are areas where the air accumulates and must come down, while in other areas there is a loss and an ...
The upwelling is less intense and takes place over a wider band under the divergence zone. In wind speeds ranging from 2–12 m/s (6.6–39.4 ft/s) the maximum vertical velocity ranged from 2–10 cm/s (0.79–3.94 in/s) with a ratio of down-welling to wind velocities ranging from −0.0025 to −0.0085. [8]
The positive vorticity advection area is typically associated with divergence and upward motion. The negative vorticity advection area will be associated with convergence and downward motion. [citation needed] This produces convergence because of the way the air gains cyclonic vorticity while entering the base of the trough. The opposite ...
The atmospheric circulation can be viewed as a heat engine driven by the Sun's energy and whose energy sink, ultimately, is the blackness of space. The work produced by that engine causes the motion of the masses of air, and in that process it redistributes the energy absorbed by the Earth's surface near the tropics to the latitudes nearer the ...
A convergence zone in meteorology is a region in the atmosphere where two prevailing flows meet and interact, usually resulting in distinctive weather conditions. [1] This causes a mass accumulation that eventually leads to a vertical movement and to the formation of clouds and precipitation . [ 1 ]
Inversely, sometimes collapsed frontal systems will degenerate into troughs. Sometimes the region between two high pressure centers may also assume the character of a trough when there is a detectable wind shift noted at the surface. In the absence of a wind shift, the region is designated a col, akin to a geographic saddle between two mountain ...