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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]
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]
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 act as the steering flow for tropical cyclones that form over the world's oceans. [32] Trade winds also steer African dust westward across the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean, as well as portions of southeast North America. [33] A monsoon is a seasonal prevailing wind that lasts for several months within tropical regions.
Volta do mar, volta do mar largo, or volta do largo (the phrase in Portuguese means literally 'turn of the sea' but also 'return from the sea') is a navigational technique perfected by Portuguese navigators during the Age of Discovery in the late fifteenth century, using the dependable phenomenon of the great permanent wind circle, the North ...
This period was called the "dead horse" time, and it usually lasted a month or two. The seaman's ceremony was to celebrate having worked off the "dead horse" debt. As west-bound shipping from Europe usually reached the subtropics at about the time the "dead horse" was worked off, the latitude became associated with the ceremony.
Santa Ana winds and, their Bay Area cousin, the Diablo winds occur when air from a region of high pressure over the dry Great Basin region of the U.S. flows westward toward lower pressure located ...
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.