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The term originally derives from the early fourteenth century sense of trade (in late Middle English) still often meaning "path" or "track". [2] The Portuguese recognized the importance of the trade winds (then the volta do mar, meaning in Portuguese "turn of the sea" but also "return from the sea") in navigation in both the north and south Atlantic Ocean as early as the 15th century. [3]
George Hadley (12 February 1685 – 28 June 1768) was an English lawyer and amateur meteorologist who proposed the atmospheric mechanism by which the trade winds are sustained, which is now named in his honour as Hadley circulation. As a key factor in ensuring that European sailing vessels reached North American shores, understanding the trade ...
The winds that flow to the west (from the east, easterly wind) at the ground level in the Hadley cell are called the trade winds. Though the Hadley cell is described as located at the equator, it shifts northerly (to higher latitudes) in June and July and southerly (toward lower latitudes) in December and January, as a result of the Sun's ...
The trade winds (also called trades) are the prevailing pattern of easterly surface winds found in the tropics near the Earth's equator, [4] equatorward of the subtropical ridge. These winds blow predominantly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere. [5]
Early efforts by scientists to explain aspects of global wind patterns often focused on the trade winds as the steadiness of the winds was assumed to portend a simple physical mechanism. Galileo Galilei proposed that the trade winds resulted from the atmosphere lagging behind the Earth's faster tangential rotation speed in the low latitudes ...
This established the standard Spanish route to the Americas: south to the Canary Islands, west on the trade winds to the Caribbean, then beat against the wind north of Cuba using the Florida Current to the Gulf Steam, then use it to go north to the westerlies which led directly home. Since wind systems move north in summer and south in winter ...
The Intertropical Convergence Zone is the result of the northeasterly trade winds and southeasterly trade winds converging in an area of high latent heat and low pressure. [3] As the two trade winds converge, the cool, dry air collects moisture from the warm ocean and rises, contributing to cloud formation and precipitation.
In mountainous parts of the world subjected to relatively consistent winds (for example, the trade winds), a more moist climate usually prevails on the windward side of a mountain than on the leeward (downwind) side, as wind carries moist air masses and orographic precipitation.