How are the trade winds formed?
Trade winds are caused by the strong warming and evaporation within the atmosphere around the equator. (1) Around the equator, the warm air rises rapidly, carrying a lot of moisture. The air starts to sink around the tropics, and finally reaches the ground.
What is a trade wind desert?
An area of very little rainfall and high temperature that occurs where the trade winds or their equivalent (such as the harmattan) blow over land.
How coastal deserts are formed?
Cold ocean currents contribute to the formation of coastal deserts. Air blowing toward shore, chilled by contact with cold water, produces a layer of fog. This heavy fog drifts onto land. Although humidity is high, the atmospheric changes that normally cause rainfall are not present.
What are the trade winds and how do they affect the Sahara Desert?
Generated over the Sahara’s hot surfaces, daily thermal air streams are superimposed to the Ocean’s trade wind system. One of the world’s largest on-shore wind area is thereby created. By moving away clouds arriving from the ocean, trade winds are responsible for the Sahara’s extreme dryness.
What do the trade winds do?
The trade winds are winds that reliably blow east to west just north and south of the equator. The winds help ships travel west, and they can also steer storms such as hurricanes, too. For example, high in the atmosphere, the jet streams typically blow across Earth from west to east.
Why trade winds are called trade winds?
The trade winds were named by the crews of sailing ships that depended on the winds during westward ocean crossings. …
How are latitudinal deserts formed?
Desert formation in these particular latitudes is primarily due to complex global air-circulation patterns caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis (earth moves at great speed near the equator and slowly near the poles), the seasonal tilting of the earth in relation to the sun, and other factors.
Where are trade wind deserts located?
1 Trade-wind deserts. Trade-wind deserts include some of the largest deserts on Earth, such as the Sahara, the Kalahari, and the Australian deserts. They lie along the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, between 15° and 30° north and south of the equator.
How are deserts formed?
Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks which consequently break in pieces. Although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods.
Where are deserts formed?
Geographically speaking, most deserts are found on the western sides of continents or—in the case of the Sahara, Arabian, and Gobi deserts and the smaller deserts of Asia—are located far from the coast in the Eurasian interior. They tend to occur under the eastern sides of major subtropical high-pressure cells.
What causes the trade winds to weaken?
The air-sea interaction that occur during an El Niño event feed off of each other. As the pressure falls in the east and rises in the west, the surface pressure gradient is reduced and the trade winds weaken.
Why trade wind is called trade wind?
The trade winds were named by the crews of sailing ships that depended on the winds during westward ocean crossings.
Which is the best example of a trade wind desert?
An area of very little rainfall and high temperature which occurs where the trade winds or their equivalent (such as the harmattan) blow over land; the best examples are the Sahara and Kalahari deserts. The arid cold-water coasts on the western shores of North and South America and Africa.
How are the trade winds in the tropics created?
The trade winds begin as warm, moist air from the equator rises in the atmosphere and cooler air closer to the poles sinks. The trade winds are created by a cycle of warm, moist air rising near the equator. The air eventually cools and sinks a bit further north in the tropics. This phenomenon is called the Hadley cell.
Where do the air masses go after the trade winds?
The rising air masses move toward the poles, then sink back toward Earth’s surface near the horse latitudes. The sinking air triggers the calm trade winds and little precipitation, completing the cycle.
How are deserts classified by their weather pattern?
Deserts are classified by their geographical location and dominant weather pattern as trade wind, midlatitude, rain shadow, coastal, monsoon, or polar deserts. Former desert areas presently in nonarid environments are paleodeserts, and extraterrestrial deserts exist on other planets.
