When do trade winds occur

Wind is a renewable resource that does not directly cause pollution. Wind energy is harnessed through powerful turbine s. Wind turbines have a tall tubular tower with two or three propeller-like blades rotating at the top. When the wind turns the blades, the blades turn a generator and create electricity. Often, wind turbines are collected in windy areas in arrays known as wind farm s.

Many wind farms have been established on mountains, in valleys, and offshore, as the air from the ocean interacts with land-air.

Some people think wind turbines are ugly and complain about the noise they make. The slowly rotating blades can also kill birds and bats—but not nearly as many as cars, power lines, and high-rise buildings. The economic drawback to wind farms, however, is the wind itself.

If it's not blowing, there's no electricity generated. Still, use of wind energy has more than quadrupled between and Germany has the most installed wind energy capacity, followed by Spain, the United States, India, and Denmark. Development is also growing quickly in France and China. Kamikaze Like the Protestant Wind, kamikaze were specific historical winds. Kamikazetranslated as divine windswere major typhoons that destroyed the invading Mongolian Navy off the coast of Japan in the late s.

In the 20th century, kamikaze became the informal name for suicide attacks during World War II. The official name for kamikaze strategy is tokktai. Protestant Wind The Protestant Wind refers to the lucky weather encountered by the British Navy of the 16thth centuries.

Britain had just become a Protestant nation. Anemoi Deities representing the winds play an important role in mythologies around the world. In Europe, ancient Greek myths refer to the Anemoi , or wind gods, as Boreas north wind , Eurus east wind , Notus south wind , and Zephyrus west wind.

In Aztec mythology, the four wind gods were Mictlanpachecatl north wind , Tlalocayotl east wind , Vitztlampaehecatl south wind , and Cihuatecayotl west wind. Many people were confined to their homes for a week.

The devastation and inconvenience led urban leaders to invest in the creation of the first subway system in the U. Age of Sail The ability of ships to sail with powerful trade winds helped determine the political and engineering history of the Age of Exploration, sometimes nicknamed the Age of Sail. Spanish, Portuguese, and British ships were quick, relatively easy to maneuver, and their large, complex series of sails exploited trade winds and southern westerlies to travel across the ocean.

Chicago is a lakeside city that experiences cool breezes coming off Lake Michigan. It is not, however, any windier than most other cities. The nickname most likely came from Chicagos relationship with Cincinnati, Ohio, in the 19th century. Their industrial economies, as well as their baseball teams, were fiercely competitive.

Cincinnati leaders dismissed Chicago baseball players and businesses as being insubstantial and meaninglesswindy and full of hot air. Extraterrestrial Winds The same forces that cause winds on Earthuneven heating by the sun and the planets rotationcause other planets to develop strong winds. Jupiters famous Great Red Spot is actually a centuries-old hurricane-like storm, swirling at around kph mph. The strongest winds in the solar system, however, belong to its outermost planet, Neptune.

Neptunian winds whip at speeds up to 2, kph 1, mph. Extrasolar planets those outside our solar system have even faster winds. The extrasolar planets of 51 Pegasi have winds that blow 14, kph 9, mph! Gone with the Loo There are dozens of names for winds that blow through specific regions. Some, like the noreasters that blow from the northeast down the East Coast, are not creatively named.

Here are some others: barber : cold, moisture-laden wind that freezes on contact with hair and beards. Coromuel : strong, warm wind that blows from afternoon to early morning through La Paz, Baja California, Mexico. The wind was named after British sailor Samuel Cromwell, whose name the locals could not pronounce. Hawk : strong, cool breeze blowing westward through Chicago from Lake Michigan. The Levant, the Mideast region in the eastern Mediterranean, does not experience the levant.

Loo : strong, hot summer wind that blows across northern India from the arid deserts to the west, and is only stopped by the arrival of the monsoon. The Loo is such a powerful ecological and cultural force that ice creams and sherbets are consumed to combat Loo-induced fatigue.

November witch : hurricane-force winds that develop as cold Arctic air masses meet warm air from the Gulf over the Great Lakes. Pembrokeshire Dangler : area where prevailing winds converge and cause a line of cold rain and snow to dangle north-south across the Irish Sea.

Santa Anas : hot, dry winds that blow from the deserts and mountains of inland California to the coast. Santa Anas are often responsible for spreading Southern Californias destructive wildfires, earning them the nickname murder winds. Siroccos carry tons of dust and sand throughout northern Africa, and contribute to wet weather as they reach Europe. Also called the West Wind Drift.

The Coriolis effect makes storms swirl clockwise in the Southern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. Usually, hurricanes refer to cyclones that form over the Atlantic Ocean. High-pressure systems are usually associated with clear weather. Hurricanes are the same thing as typhoons, but usually located in the Atlantic Ocean region. Also known as the Monsoon Zone.

Low-pressure systems are often associated with storms. Also called a temperate zone. Monsoon usually refers to the winds of the Indian Ocean and South Asia, which often bring heavy rains.

Also called a storm tide. Tropical storms are less powerful than cyclones and hurricanes. Typhoons are the same thing as hurricanes, but usually located in the Pacific or Indian Ocean region. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.

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If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Erosion is the process where rocks are broken down by natural forces such as wind or water.

There are two main types of erosion: chemical and physical. In physical erosion, the rock breaks down but its chemical composition remains the same, such as during a landslide or bioerosion, when plants take root and crack rocks.

Explore the process of erosion with this collection of resources. Ocean currents are the continuous, predictable, directional movement of seawater driven by gravity, wind Coriolis Effect , and water density. Ocean water moves in two directions: horizontally and vertically.

Horizontal movements are referred to as currents, while vertical changes are called upwellings or downwellings. Explore how ocean currents are interconnected with other systems with these resources. Weather is the state of the atmosphere, including temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, humidity, precipitation, and cloud cover.

It differs from climate, which is all weather conditions for a particular location averaged over about 30 years. Weather is influenced by latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography. It impacts the way people dress each day and the types of structures built. This phenomenon is called the Hadley cell. Because Earth rotates as the air is moving, the winds in the Northern Hemisphere curve to the right and air in the Southern Hemisphere curves to the left.

The trade winds can be found about 30 degrees north and south of the equator. Right at the equator there is almost no wind at all—an area sometimes called the doldrums. Earth's rotation causes the trade winds to curve toward the west in the Northern Hemisphere and the east in the Southern Hemisphere.

Even now, commercial ships use "the trades" and the currents the winds produce to hasten their oceanic voyages. How do these commerce-friendly winds form? Between about 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south of the equator, in a region called the horse latitudes , the Earth's rotation causes air to slant toward the equator in a southwesterly direction in the northern hemisphere and in a northwesterly direction in the southern hemisphere.

This is called the Coriolis Effect. The Coriolis Effect, in combination with an area of high pressure, causes the prevailing winds—the trade winds—to move from east to west on both sides of the equator across this degree "belt. As the wind blows to about five degrees north and south of the equator, both air and ocean currents come to a halt in a band of hot, dry air. There is no Coriolis effect underneath a horizontally and freely moving object at the equator as there is no rotation of the surface of the Earth sense of turning , and there is no curving of the path for the object as we measure relative to Earth's surface and the object's path is straight.

Thus causing no Coriolis effect. The equation of motion for an object in an inertial reference is as follows:. The above equation can be turned into a non-inertial reference frame is:. It is because of such a high temperature the air of that region heats up and the hot air rises causing a low-pressure area under it, also known as the monsoonal trough.

On the contrary, the temperature over the Indian Ocean is relatively low therefore a relatively high-pressure region is created over the sea. The air from the high-pressure region moves towards the low-pressure region because of the pressure difference between the Indian Ocean and North Central Indian Plains.