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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.
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 ...
Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hours, to global winds resulting from the difference in absorption of solar energy between the climate ...
As the difference in albedo between ice and e.g. ocean is around 2/3, this means that due to a 1 °C rise, the albedo will drop by 2%*2/3 = 4/3%. However this will mainly happen in northern and southern latitudes, around 60 degrees off the equator, and so the effective area is actually 2% * cos(60 o) = 1%, and the global albedo drop would be 2/3%.
Trigonometry tells us that the sine of a 30° angle is 1/2, whereas the sine of a 90° angle is 1. Therefore, the sunbeam hitting the ground at a 30° angle spreads the same amount of light over twice as much area (if we imagine the Sun shining from the south at noon , the north–south width doubles; the east–west width does not).
The scientific community has been investigating the causes of climate change for decades. After thousands of studies, the scientific consensus is that it is "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land since pre-industrial times." [1]: 3 This consensus is supported by around 200 scientific organizations worldwide. [2]
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a global climate phenomenon that emerges from variations in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific Ocean. Those variations have an irregular pattern but do have some semblance of cycles. The occurrence of ENSO is not predictable.
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 ...