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The largest ocean gyres are wind-driven, meaning that their locations and dynamics are controlled by the prevailing global wind patterns: easterlies at the tropics and westerlies at the midlatitudes. These wind patterns result in a wind stress curl that drives Ekman pumping in the subtropics (resulting in downwelling) and Ekman suction in ...
The dominant winds are the trends in direction of wind with the highest speed over a particular point on the Earth's surface at any given time. A region's prevailing and dominant winds are the result of global patterns of movement in the Earth's atmosphere. [1] In general, winds are predominantly easterly at low latitudes globally.
One of the first to publish on these effects was Milutin Milanković; the cyclic effects of axial tilt, eccentricity, and other orbital parameters upon global climate were named Milanković cycles. Although individual mechanisms (such as axial tilt and sun angle) are thought to be understood, the overall impact of orbital forcing on global ...
At the ground level, however, the movement of the air toward the equator in the lower troposphere deviates toward the west, producing a wind from the east. 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.
The authors argue that global warming is a likely causative factor in the weakening of the wind pattern. [15] However, a 2011 study from The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project shows that, aside from El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycles, the overall speed and direction of the Walker circulation remained steady between 1871 and 2008.
While aerosols typically limit global warming by reflecting sunlight, black carbon in soot that falls on snow or ice can contribute to global warming. Not only does this increase the absorption of sunlight, it also increases melting and sea-level rise. [58] Limiting new black carbon deposits in the Arctic could reduce global warming by 0.2 °C ...
Jet streams (shown in pink) are well-known examples of thermal wind. They arise from the horizontal temperature gradients between the warm tropics and the colder polar regions. In atmospheric science, the thermal wind is the vector difference between the geostrophic wind at upper altitudes minus that at lower altitudes in the atmosphere.
A humid continental climate is marked by variable weather patterns and a large seasonal temperature variance, cold and often very snowy winters, and warm summers. Places with more than three months of average daily temperatures above 10 °C (50 °F) and a coldest month temperature below −3 °C (27 °F) and which do not meet the criteria for ...