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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. They originate from the high-pressure areas in the horse latitudes (about 30 degrees) and trend towards the poles and steer extratropical cyclones in this general manner. [ 3 ]
The westerlies (blue arrows) and trade winds (yellow and brown arrows) 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 ...
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.
In oceanography, a gyre (/ ˈ dʒ aɪ ər /) is any large system of ocean surface currents moving in a circular fashion driven by wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis effect; planetary vorticity, horizontal friction and vertical friction determine the circulatory patterns from the wind stress curl ().
The easterly Trade Winds and the polar easterlies have nothing over which to prevail, as their parent circulation cells are strong enough and face few obstacles either in the form of massive terrain features or high pressure zones. The weaker Westerlies of the Ferrel cell, however, can be disrupted.
A strong föhn wind can make snow one foot (30 cm) deep almost vanish in one day. [6] The snow partly sublimates [ 7 ] and partly melts and evaporates in the dry wind. Chinook winds have been observed to raise winter temperature , often from below −20 °C (−4 °F) to as high as 10–20 °C (50–68 °F) for a few hours or days, then ...
The westerlies can be particularly strong, especially in the southern hemisphere, where there is less land in the middle latitudes to cause the flow pattern to amplify, which slows the winds down. The strongest westerly winds in the middle latitudes are within a band known as the Roaring Forties , between 40 and 50 degrees latitude south of the ...
Hadley had sought to explain the physical mechanism for the trade winds and the westerlies; [66] the Hadley circulation and the Hadley cells are named in honor of his pioneering work. [ 67 ] [ 68 ] Although Hadley's ideas invoked physical concepts that would not be formalized until well after his death, his model was largely qualitative and ...