Atmospheric circulation

Atmospheric circulation is the large-scale movement of

air, and together with ocean circulation is the means by
which thermal energy is redistributed on the surface of the
Earth.

The Earth's atmospheric circulation varies from year to

year, but the large-scale structure of its circulation remains
fairly constant. The smaller scale weather systems – mid-
latitude depressions, or tropical convective cells – occur
"randomly", and long-range weather predictions of those
cannot be made beyond ten days in practice, or a month in
theory (see Chaos theory and Butterfly effect).

The Earth's weather is a consequence of its illumination by

the Sun, and the laws of thermodynamics. The atmospheric
circulation can be viewed as a heat engine driven by the Idealised depiction (atequinox) of large scale atmospheric
Sun's energy, and whose energy sink, ultimately, is the circulation on Earth.
blackness of space. The work produced by that engine
causes the motion of the masses of air and in that process, it
redistributes the energy absorbed by the Earth's surface near
the tropics to the latitudes nearer the poles, and then to
space.

The large-scale atmospheric circulation "cells" shift

polewards in warmer periods (for example, interglacials
compared to glacials), but remain largely constant as they
are, fundamentally, a property of the Earth's size, rotation
rate, heating and atmospheric depth, all of which change
little. Over very long time periods (hundreds of millions of
years), a tectonic uplift can significantly alter their major
elements, such as the jet stream, and plate tectonics may Long-term mean precipitation by month
shift ocean currents. During the extremely hot climates of
the Mesozoic, a third desert belt may have existed at the
Equator.

Contents
Latitudinal circulation features
Hadley cell
Ferrel cell
Polar cell
Longitudinal circulation features
Walker circulation
El Niño – Southern Oscillation

References
 External links

Latitudinal circulation features

The wind belts girdling the planet are organised into three cells in each hemisphere:
the Hadley cell, the Ferrel cell, and the Polar cell. Those cells exist in both the
northern and southern hemispheres. The vast bulk of the atmospheric motion occurs
in the Hadley cell. The high pressure systems acting on the Earth's surface are
balanced by the low pressure systems elsewhere. As a result, there is a balance of
forces acting on the Earth's surface.

Hadley cell
The atmospheric circulation pattern that George Hadley described was an attempt to
explain the trade winds. The Hadley cell is a closed circulation loop which begins at An idealised view of three large
the equator. There, moist air is warmed by the Earth's surface, decreases in density circulation cells showing surface
and rises. A similar air mass rising on the other side of the equator forces those winds

rising air masses to move poleward. The rising air creates a low pressure zone near
the equator. As the air moves poleward, it cools, becomes denser, and descends at
about the 30th parallel, creating a high-pressure area. The descended air then travels
toward the equator along the surface, replacing the air that rose from the equatorial
zone, closing the loop of the Hadley cell. The poleward movement of the air in the
upper part of the troposphere deviates toward the east, caused by the coriolis
acceleration (a manifestation of conservation of angular momentum). At the ground
level, however, the movement of the air toward the equator in the lower troposphere Vertical velocity at 500 hPa, July
deviates toward the west, producing a wind from the east. The winds that flow to the average. Ascent (negative values) is
west (from the east, easterly wind) at the ground level in the Hadley cell are called concentrated close to the solar
the Trade Winds. equator; descent (positive values) is
more diffuse but also occurs mainly
Though the Hadley cell is described as located at the equator, in the northern in the Hadley cell.
hemisphere it shifts to higher latitudes in June and July and toward lower latitudes in
December and January, which is the result of the Sun's heating of the surface. The
zone where the greatest heating takes place is called the "thermal equator". As the
southern hemisphere summer is December to March, the movement of the thermal
equator to higher southern latitudes takes place then.

The Hadley system provides an example of a thermally direct circulation. The power
watts.[1]
of the Hadley system, considered as a heat engine, is estimated at 200 tera The ITCZ's band of clouds over the
Eastern Pacific and the Americas as
seen from space
Ferrel cell
Part of the air rising at 60° latitude diverges at high altitude toward the poles and
creates the polar cell. The rest moves toward the equator where it collides at 30° latitude with the high-level air of the Hadley cell.
There it subsides and strengthens the high pressure ridges beneath. A large part of the energy that drives the Ferrel cell is provided by
the polar and Hadley cells circulating on either side and that drag the Ferrel cell with it.[2] The Ferrel cell, theorized by William
Ferrel (1817–1891), is, therefore, a secondary circulation feature, whose existence depends upon the Hadley and polar cells on either
side of it. It might be thought of as aneddy created by the Hadley and polar cells.
The air of the Ferrel cell that descends at 30° latitude returns poleward at the ground level, and as it does so it deviates toward the
east. In the upper atmosphere of the Ferrel cell, the air moving toward the equator deviates toward the west. Both of those deviations,
as in the case of the Hadley and polar cells, are driven by conservation of angular momentum. As a result, just as the easterly Trade
Winds are found below the Hadley cell, theWesterlies are found beneath the Ferrel cell.

The Ferrel cell is weak, because It has neither a strong source of heat nor a strong sink, so the airflow and temperatures within it are
variable. For this reason, the mid-latitudes are sometimes known as the "zone of mixing." The Hadley and polar cells are truly
closed loops, the Ferrel cell is not, and the telling point is in the Westerlies, which are more formally known as "the Prevailing
Westerlies." The easterly Trade Winds and the polar easterlies have nothing over which to prevail, as their parent circulation cells are
strong enough and face few obstacles either in the form of massive terrain features or high pressure zones. The weaker Westerlies of
the Ferrel cell, however, can be disrupted. The local passage of a cold front may change that in a matter of minutes, and frequently
does. As a result, at the surface, winds can vary abruptly in direction. But the winds above the surface, where they are less disrupted
by terrain, are essentially westerly. A low pressure zone at 60° latitude that moves toward the equator, or a high pressure zone at 30°
latitude that moves poleward, will accelerate the Westerlies of the Ferrel cell. A strong high, moving polewards may bring westerly
winds for days.

The Ferrel system acts as aheat pump with a coefficient of performance of 12.1, consuming kinetic energy from the Hadley and polar
systems at an approximate rate of 275 terawatts.[1]

Polar cell
The Polar cell is a simple system with strong convection drivers. Though cool and dry relative to equatorial air, the air masses at the
60th parallel are still sufficiently warm and moist to undergo convection and drive a thermal loop. At the 60th parallel, the air rises to
the tropopause (about 8 km at this latitude) and moves poleward. As it does so, the upper level air mass deviates toward the east.
When the air reaches the polar areas, it has cooled and is considerably denser than the underlying air. It descends, creating a cold, dry
high-pressure area. At the polar surface level, the mass of air is driven toward the 60th parallel, replacing the air that rose there, and
the polar circulation cell is complete. As the air at the surface moves toward the equator, it deviates toward the west. Again, the
deviations of the air masses are the result of theCoriolis effect. The air flows at the surface are called the polar easterlies.

The outflow of air mass from the cell creates harmonic waves in the atmosphere known as Rossby waves. These ultra-long waves
determine the path of the polar jet stream, which travels within the transitional zone between the tropopause and the Ferrel cell. By
acting as a heat sink, the polar cell moves the abundant heat from the equator toward the polar regions.

The Hadley cell and the polar cell are similar in that they are thermally direct; in other words, they exist as a direct consequence of
surface temperatures. Their thermal characteristics drive the weather in their domain. The sheer volume of ener
gy that the Hadley cell
transports, and the depth of the heat sink that is the polar cell, ensures that the effects of transient weather phenomena do not only
have negligible effect on the system as a whole, but — except under unusual circumstances — do not form. The endless chain of
passing highs and lows which is part of everyday life for mid-latitude dwellers, at latitudes between 30 and 60° latitude, is unknown
above the 60th and below the 30th parallels. There are some notable exceptions to this rule. In Europe, unstable weather extends to at
least the 70th parallel north.

The polar cell, terrain and Katabatic winds in Antarctica, can create very cold conditions at the surface, for instance the lowest
temperature recorded on Earth: −89.2 °C at Vostok Station in Antarctica, measured 1983.[3][4][5]

Longitudinal circulation features

While the Hadley, Ferrel, and polar cells (whose axes are oriented along parallels or latitudes) are the major features of global heat
transport, they do not act alone. Temperature differences also drive a set of circulation cells, whose axes of circulation are
longitudinally oriented. This atmospheric motion is known aszonal overturning circulation.
Latitudinal circulation is a result of the highest
solar radiation per unit area (solar intensity)
falling on the tropics. The solar intensity
decreases as the latitude increases, reaching
essentially zero at the poles. Longitudinal
circulation, however, is a result of the heat
capacity of water, its absorptivity, and its mixing.
Water absorbs more heat than does the land, but
Diurnal wind change in local coastal area, also applies on the
its temperature does not rise as greatly as does the
continental scale.
land. As a result, temperature variations on land
are greater than on water.

The Hadley, Ferrel, and polar cells operate at the largest scale of thousands of kilometers (synoptic scale). The latitudinal circulation
can also act on this scale of oceans and continents, and this effect is seasonal or even decadal. Warm air rises over the equatorial,
continental, and western Pacific Ocean regions. When it reaches the tropopause, it cools and subsides in a region of relatively cooler
water mass.

The Pacific Ocean cell plays a particularly important role in Earth's weather. This entirely ocean-based cell comes about as the result
of a marked difference in the surface temperatures of the western and eastern Pacific. Under ordinary circumstances, the western
Pacific waters are warm, and the eastern waters are cool. The process begins when strong convective activity over equatorial East
Asia and subsiding cool air off South America's west coast creates a wind pattern which pushes Pacific water westward and piles it
[6][7][8][9] .
up in the western Pacific. (Water levels in the western Pacific are about 60 cm higher than in the eastern Pacific.)

The daily (diurnal) longitudinal effects are at the mesoscale (a horizontal range of 5 to several hundred kilometres). During the day,
air warmed by the relatively hotter land rises, and as it does so it draws a cool breeze from the sea that replaces the risen air. At night,
the relatively warmer water and cooler land reverses the process, and a breeze from the land, of air cooled by the land, is carried
offshore by night.

Walker circulation
The Pacific cell is of such importance that it has been named the Walker circulation after Sir Gilbert Walker, an early-20th-century
director of British observatories in India, who sought a means of predicting when the monsoon winds of India would fail. While he
was never successful in doing so, his work led him to the discovery of a link between the periodic pressure variations in the Indian
Ocean, and those between the eastern and western Pacific, which he termed theSouthern
" Oscillation".

The movement of air in the Walker circulation affects the loops on either side. Under normal circumstances, the weather behaves as
expected. But every few years, the winters become unusually warm or unusually cold, or the frequency of hurricanes increases or
decreases, and the pattern sets in for an indeterminate period.

The Walker Cell plays a key role in this and in the El Niño phenomenon. If convective activity slows in the Western Pacific for some
reason (this reason is not currently known), the climates of areas adjacent to the Western Pacific are affected. First, the upper-level
westerly winds fail. This cuts off the source of returning, cool air that would normally subside at about 30° south latitude, and
therefore the air returning as surface easterlies ceases. There are two consequences. Warm water ceases to surge into the eastern
Pacific from the west (it was "piled" by past easterly winds) since there is no longer a surface wind to push it into the area of the west
Pacific. This and the corresponding effects of the Southern Oscillation result in long-term unseasonable temperatures and
precipitation patterns in North and South America, Australia, and Southeast Africa, and the disruption of ocean currents.

Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, fast-blowing upper level Westerlies of the Hadley cell form, which would ordinarily be blocked by the
Walker circulation and unable to reach such intensities. These winds disrupt the tops of nascent hurricanes and greatly diminish the
number which are able to reach full strength.
El Niño – Southern Oscillation
El Niño and La Niña are opposite surface temperature anomalies of the Southern Pacific, which heavily influence the weather on a
large scale. In the case of El Niño, warm surface water approaches the coasts of South America which results in blocking the
upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water. This has serious impacts on the fish populations.

In the La Niña case, the convective cell over the western Pacific strengthens inordinately, resulting in colder than normal winters in
North America and a more robust cyclone season in South-East Asia and Eastern Australia. There is also an increased upwelling of
deep cold ocean waters and more intense uprising of surface air near South America, resulting in increasing numbers of drought
occurrences, although fishermen reap benefits from the more nutrient-filled eastern Pacific waters.

References
1. Junling Huang and Michael B. McElroy (2014)."Contributions of the Hadley and Ferrel Circulations to the Energetics
of the Atmosphere over the Past 32 Y ears" (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00538.1)
. Journal
of Climate. 27 (7): 2656–2666. Bibcode:2014JCli...27.2656H (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014JCli...27.2656H) .
doi:10.1175/jcli-d-13-00538.1(https://doi.org/10.1175%2Fjcli-d-13-00538.1) .
2. Yochanan Kushnir (2000)."The Climate System: General Circulation and Climate Zones"(http://eesc.columbia.edu/c
ourses/ees/climate/lectures/gen_circ/index.html)
. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
3. "The physical environment of the Antarctic"(http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/momu/International_Antarctic_Weather
_Forecasting_Handbook/2.1_The%20physical%20environment%20of%20the%20Antarctic.php) . British Antarctic
Survey (BAS).
4. "Regional climate variation and weather"(https://web.archive.org/web/20150306052337/http://www .discoveringantar
ctica.org.uk/alevel_2_2.html). RGS-IBG in partnership with BAS. Archived fromthe original (http://www.discoveringa
ntarctica.org.uk/alevel_2_2.html)on 2015-03-06.
5. "Welcome to the Coldest Town on Earth" (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oymyakon-the-coldest-town/).
Scientific American. 2008.
6. "Envisat watches for La Nina"(https://web.archive.org/web/20080424113710/http://www .bnsc.gov.uk/content.aspx?n
id=5989). BNSC. 2006-03-03. Archived fromthe original (http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/content.aspx?nid=5989)on 2008-
04-24. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
7. "The Tropical Atmosphere Ocean Array: Gathering Data to Predict El Niño"(http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/dat
asets/tropical/welcome.html). Celebrating 200 Years. NOAA. 2007-01-08. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
8. "Ocean Surface Topography" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090414022153/http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pres
entations/oceanography-101/ocean101-slide14.html) . Oceanography 101. JPL, NASA. 2006-07-05. Archived from
the original (http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/presentations/oceanography-101/ocean101-slide14.html)
on April 14,
2009. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
9. "ANNUAL SEA LEVEL DATA SUMMARY REPORT JULY 2005 – JUNE 2006" (https://web.archive.org/web/2007080
7235141/http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDO60202/IDO60202.2006.pdf)(PDF). THE AUSTRALIAN BASELINE SEA
LEVEL MONITORING PROJECT. Bureau of Meteorology. Archived from the original (http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/ID
O60202/IDO60202.2006.pdf)(pdf) on 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2007-07-26.

External links
Animation showing global cloud circulation for one month based on weather satellite images
Air-sea interactions and Ocean Circulation patterns on Thailand's Government weather department

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