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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.
The westerlies play an important role in carrying the warm, equatorial waters and winds to the western coasts of continents, [13] [14] especially in the southern hemisphere because of its vast oceanic expanse. The westerlies explain why coastal Western North America tends to be wet, especially from Northern Washington to Alaska, during the winter.
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]
The Roaring Forties are strong westerly winds that occur in the Southern Hemisphere, generally between the latitudes of 40° and 50° south. [2] The strong eastward air currents are caused by the combination of air being displaced from the Equator towards the South Pole , Earth's rotation , and the scarcity of landmasses to serve as windbreaks ...
The horse latitudes are the latitudes about 30 degrees north and south of the Equator. [1] They are characterized by sunny skies, calm winds, and very little precipitation. They are also known as subtropical ridges or highs. It is a high-pressure area at the divergence of trade winds and the westerlies.
The polar easterlies, also known as Polar Hadley cells, are dry, cold prevailing winds that blow from the high-pressure areas of the polar highs at the north and South Poles towards the low-pressure areas within the Westerlies at high latitudes.
Buran (a wind which blows across eastern Asia. It is also known as Purga when over the tundra); Karakaze (strong cold mountain wind from Gunma Prefecture in Japan); East Asian Monsoon, known in China and Taiwan as meiyu (梅雨), in Korea as jangma (), and in Japan as tsuyu (梅雨) when advancing northwards in the spring and shurin (秋霖) when retreating southwards in autumn.
The ITCZ is visible as a band of clouds encircling Earth near the Equator. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ / ɪ tʃ / ITCH, or ICZ), [1] known by sailors as the doldrums [2] or the calms because of its monotonous windless weather, is the area where the northeast and the southeast trade winds converge.