Winds
General Infomation
Winds: It's Simple!
So, What is Wind??
Wind is Air that is moving sideways. It's basically air the moves from an area of high pressure, to low pressure. There are 2 main types of wind. Global winds and local winds. We'll get more into that later.
What Causes Wind?
The differences in air pressure causes wind. The differences in air pressure are caused by how much a certain place is heated. The air pressure depends on the temperature.
Local Winds
A local wind is wind that blows over a smaller areas, unlike global winds that blow over very large areas. There are two main types of local winds. They are Land Breezes, and land breezes. A sea breeze is a wind that takes place in the day time. During the day air over water is cooler and air over land is hotter. These differences in air pressure starts a sea breeze. And as for the land breeze, it's the same exact thing except its in reverse! It takes place during the night, and in the time the air over the water is warmer than the air over the land, so the air pressure creates a land breeze.
GLOBAL WINDS: It's a big topic :P
Global Winds - Part one: Horse Latitudes and Doldrums
Global winds are winds that, like every other wind, blows. But his time, it's blowing over a huge area. There are many different areas of Global winds. Oh, what you want me to list them for you? Why didn't you just say so?
- Trade Winds
- Prevailing Westerlies
- Polar Easterlies
- Doldrums
- Horse Latitudes
Was that a mouth full! Hey, did you ever here the saying, "The odd one out,"? Well in our case is the "Odd two out." Why you ask? Well, this is because the Doldrums and horse latitudes, unlike all the other areas of wind, are calm, not all over the place. The Horse Latitudes are located at 30 degrees North and South. And The Doldrums are located on the equator, 0 degrees latitude.
Global winds - Part Two; The other winds
So, Like i said before, The other winds include:
- Trade Winds
- Prevailing westerlies
- Polar Easterlies
So, here's the basic run downs,
- The trade winds blow between 0 and 30 degrees latitude north and south
- The prevailing westerlies blow from west to east north and south at 30-60 degrees latitude.
- The polar easterlies blow from the poles to the equator