The Three Atmospheric Cells

Cards (21)

  • 'The Hadley Cell is the largest atmospheric cell, covering about one third of the Earth's surface.'
  • 'The Coriolis effect causes air to move from east to west at low latitudes (nearer the equator) and from west to east at high latitudes (nearer the poles). This creates two cells - the Hadley cell and the Ferrel cell.
  • Three atmospheric cells are Hadley Cell, Ferrel Cell, Polar Cell
  • Ferrel Cell is located between Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn
  • Hadley Cell is located between Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn
  • Polar Cell is located above Arctic Circle and Antarctica
  • Warm air rises at the equator  
  • Air in the artic is dry, arid, has high pressure 
  • Polar Easterlies – air moves from polar regions to lower latitudes
  • West Easterlies - air is pulled 30 degrees to higher latitudes
  • Trade windsair that is carried back to the equator from 30 degrees
  • Jet streamsfast flowing currents of air front at the boundary of cells
  • You can find low pressure at latitude 60 and 0 degrees (the equator). 
  • Global winds don’t move in a straight path because of the Coriolis effect. 
  • The Global winds are named after Westerlies Easterlies.  
  • The westerlies move between the latitudes towards the post from west to east.  
  •  
    Trade winds are found equator. 
  • Quaternary Period 
    The last 2.6 million years from ice cores 
    There have been warm periods (interglacial) lasting for about 10-15 thousand years and cold periods (glacial) lasting about 80-100 thousand years 
  • Medieval Warm Period
    A period of warming between 900 and 1300 
    Harvest records show that England was able to grow large amount of grapes (Historical Records) 
  • Tree ring date suggests this was also the case during roman times, when temperature were almost 1.0 degree Celsius warmer than today. 
  • Little Ice Age
    A period of cooling that followed the Medieval Warm Period 
    Paintings from the 17th century show the London Frost Fairs which took place on a Frozen River Thames. (Historical Records
    Historical records talk about artic ice reaching as far as Scotland and sightings of Intuits.