What Does Anticyclone Mean In Geography

What Kind Of Weather Does An Anticyclone Bring

Areas of high pressure are called anticyclones, whilst low pressure areas are known as cyclones or depressions. Each brings with it different weather patterns. Anticyclones typically result in stable, fine weather, with clear skies whilst depressions are associated with cloudier, wetter, windier conditions.

What Type Of Weather Does An Anticyclone Bring

Anticyclones can bring us very cold, crisp bright winter days and warm, sunny summer weather. In winter, the clear, settled conditions and light winds associated with anticyclones can lead to frost and fog. Sometimes in late winter or spring, the air near the ground cools so much that low cloud, or fog, can form.

Definition And Development Of An Anticyclone

As already described, an anticyclone is a wind pattern circulating a high-pressure system, clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere & counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

Sometimes, the surface over which a body of air resides starts to cool down. It may be a result of land cooling down quickly due to a lack of solar radiation or as a result of a mass of air moving in over cold ocean waters.

In turn, this cools the air down. As it cools down, the particles in the air contract and moves closer together due to a loss of energy. This causes the air to become heavier, putting more pressure on the surface below, which results in the creation of a high-pressure system.

As mentioned, winds blow from a high-pressure to a low-pressure system. In the case of an anticyclone, it blows and diverges away from the center of the high-pressure system. This results in the clear & fair weather one typically experience in the presence of an anticyclone.

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What Changes In Weather Occur When An Anticyclone Migrates Over An Area

An anticyclone is characterized by descending air, so it tends to bring stability to the atmosphere, resulting in clear skies and fair weather, or fog under certain circumstances.

1. Air descending in the atmosphere is generally cooler, but warming. The clear skies, however, allow for more insolation during the day, warming the land and air. The same clear skies also allow much of this heat to radiate into space at night, resulting in cool nights and a large temperature contrast between day and night.

2. The moisture in the surface air may be cooled and trapped by this descending motion, causing fog in certain settings. The downward flow can trap smog and other air pollution near the surface, especially if there is a temperature inversion.

3. The clockwise circulation can pin cold air against mountains when the cold air is too dense to move uphill. This often occurs on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains, and, if temperatures are cold enough, often creates temperature inversions with sleet, freezing rain, and snow.

Compatible With The Following Exam Boards

To understand the concept of depressions and anticyclones, we need to understand the terms atmospheric pressure, high pressure and low pressure.

We all know that air exerts pressure and atmospheric pressure is nothing but the force exerted by the air on the earth. To understand properly, look at the diagram given below.

Pressure is highest at sea level and decreases with increase in altitude. Also, earth consists of various high and low-pressure areas which control the weather around the world.

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Importance To Global Monsoon Regimes

When the subtropical ridge in the Northwest Pacific is stronger than normal, it leads to a wet monsoon season for Asia. The subtropical ridge position is linked to how far northward monsoon moisture and thunderstorms extend into the United States. Typically, the subtropical ridge across North America migrates far enough northward to begin monsoon conditions across the Desert Southwest from July to September. When the subtropical ridge is farther north than normal towards the Four Corners, thunderstorms of the New Mexican Monsoon can spread northward into Arizona and New Mexico. When suppressed to the south, the atmosphere dries out across the Desert Southwest, causing a break in the monsoon regime.

What Is The Weather Like During A Summer Anticyclone

Summer anticyclones bring very different weather. As the air descends it is heated causing water in the air to evaporate. Therefore there are few clouds in the air. The skies are clear allowing the suns rays to reach the surface of the earth. This causes temperatures to rise. Heat waves can occur if anticyclones remain over Britain for a number of weeks.

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How Do Anticyclones Typically Migrate Across North America

Migrating mid-latitude anticyclones can cross the entire continent, driven east by the prevailing westerlies. They form and are likely to grow beneath the ridge-to-trough side of the Rossby wave, and they tend to migrate beneath this side of the wave as well, in a general east-southeast direction.

1. The maps below track the path of a surface anticyclone during the course of several days. The shades of gray represent surface air pressure, with lighter gray indicating high pressure and darker gray indicating lower pressures. The yellow lines are isohypses at the 300 mb level, depicting upper-level conditions. The map also shows several surface cyclones , but our focus here is on the anticyclone. The legend is to the right.

2. In this first map, the anticyclone is located over western Wyoming, and a cyclone lies just to its southeast. There is a strong pressure gradient between the two, as implied by the rapidly changing shades of gray, resulting in strong 300 mb winds, implied by the tightly packed isohypses in the area.

3. On this second map, the anticyclone has moved south. The clockwise circulation around the high causes a different wind direction on each side of the high. In this relatively dry region of the continental interior, high pressure generally means clear skies.

Definition And Development Of A Cyclone

As already described, a cyclone is a wind pattern circulating a low-pressure system, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere & clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

Most cyclones form over the warm waters of the Tropics. As the warm, humid air starts to rise, it leaves an area of low pressure close to the surface.

Since winds blow from a high-pressure to a low-pressure system, they rotate and diverge from the sides into this area of low pressure. This creates the familiar cloud pattern that we see with hurricanes, typhoons, and other tropical cyclones.

As the moist & humid air continues to rise, it cools down, and the water vapor can no longer stay in its gaseous form. As a result, condensation takes place, leading to cloud formation, which is usually accompanied by heavy precipitation.

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Ascending And Descending Air

Areas of high and low pressure are caused by ascending and descending air. As air warms it ascends, leading to low pressure at the surface. As air cools it descends, leading to high pressure at the surface.

In general, low pressure leads to unsettled weather conditions and high pressure leads to settled weather conditions.

Examples Of Anticyclone In A Sentence

anticycloneUSA TODAYanticyclone CNNanticyclone Smithsoniananticyclone CNNanticyclone Smithsoniananticyclone The Christian Science Monitoranticyclone Popular Mechanicsanticyclone The Christian Science Monitor

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word ‘anticyclone.’ Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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What Does Anticyclone Mean

The anticyclone idea is used in the field of meteorology . The concept refers to an atmospheric phenomenon that involves, in the northern hemisphere a high pressure zone with the wind circulating in the same direction as the needles of the clock , while in the southern hemisphere the reverse occurs. The anticyclone, in general, makes the weather clear, stable and without rain.

In this way, in an anticyclone, the atmospheric pressure becomes higher than the pressure of the surrounding air. The air in the anticyclone makes a downward movement from the highest layers of the atmosphere towards the earth’s surface. This phenomenon, which is called subsidence, makes it difficult for clouds to form, contributing to good weather .

South Atlantic AnticycloneIt is a subtropical area found in the southern Atlantic Ocean, and is also known as the Santa Elena anticyclone . It is important to note that its position is not permanent, and neither is its intensity, but rather that in a fairly defined area an anticyclone usually appears on the meteorological charts used to describe the mean monthly pressure.The approximate coordinates are 25 ° S 15 ° W, and there is usually a wide range of high atmospheric pressure. The two names for this anticyclone respond to its proximity to the island of St. Helena , the only land space present in the vicinity, and to the fact placed in the ocean Atlantic.

What Is Depression In Bay Of Bengal

The depression over Bay of Bengal crossed the coast between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh early on Friday, the India Meteorological Department said and announced that the weather system will gradually weaken. It forecast more rains for the state and heavy to very heavy rainfall in parts of AP and Karnataka.

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Climatic Factors Influencing Romania’s Hydrographical Network

Romania is in the Northern Hemisphere, is positioned midway between the North Pole and Equator and has a total surface of 238,391 km2. This causes a transitional temperate continental climate, specific to Central Europe, with four distinct seasons . Local climatic variations are more due to differences in altitude and latitude and a few are the result of the oceanic influences coming from the west, the Mediterranean current from the southwest, and the eastern mainland.

Romania’s climatic and hydrographical characteristics are due to its position in east central Europe and to the Carpathian arc at its center. The influence of baric centers, the subtropical Azores anticyclone and the Siberian anticyclone, is to be noticed in climatic parameters during all seasons. In its turn, the Carpathian arc brings about vertical variation and an obvious gradation in the distribution of temperature, precipitation drainage and other geographical features .

Factors influencing a hydrographical network are: precipitation, outside air temperature, topography, soils, vegetation, and petrographic structure. Among these, the two main factors are precipitation and temperature.

Fig. 3. Average quantities of rainfall during the year .

Why Anticyclones Are Formed

Tropical cyclones form as a result of significant convective activity, and are warm core. Mesocyclones form as warm core cyclones over land, and can lead to tornado formation. Waterspouts can also form from mesocyclones, but more often develop from environments of high instability and low vertical wind shear.

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What Are Anticyclones And Cyclones

Cyclones and anticyclones are regions of relatively low and high pressure, respectively. The geostrophic-wind and gradient-wind models dictate that, in the Northern Hemisphere, flow around a cyclonecyclonic circulationis counterclockwise, and flow around an anticycloneanticyclonic circulationis clockwise.

Orientation In Chinese Traditional Courtyard Houses

Beijing characterized by hot humid summers due to the East Asian monsoon, and generally cold, windy, and dry winters that reflect the influence of the vast Siberian anticyclone. The Chinese, traditionally, also believe that the north-south axis is the best and most fortunate orientation . Therefore, all buildings, which are guided by the central axis spatial layout, would be arranged along the north-south direction with the main façade facing south. This oriention serves as the design guide and all the courtyard houses in a Hutong are typically arranged according to the same layout principle of southern exposure. They oriented toward east-west or south-north directions, in order to gain maximum amount of sunlight in the winter. For those houses located on the south side of the alley, they would build an access path running in between the units from north to south to obtain the benefit of southern exposure and southeastern entrance gate .

Gabriel NstaseAlexandru erbanAlina Florentina NstaseGeorge DragomirAlin Ionu BrezeanuNicolae Fani Iordan, in, 2017

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How Low And High Pressure Is Formed

Rising of air causes low pressure. In simple terms, the rising air leads to less air on the surface means low air particles pressure. On the contrary, if the air moves down towards the surface, it means there will be more density of air particles leading to high pressure.

Easy way to remember Taking out books from your bag leads to low pressure on your shoulders while putting more books inside your bag will put high pressure on your shoulder.

Just remember that low-pressure areas create rains and storms while the high-pressure area leads to clear skies.

Now that we have understood the concept of low pressure and high-pressure area, it is easy to understand the phenomenon of depressions and anticyclones.

What Is A Depression Weather

A low pressure system, also known as a depression occurs when the weather is dominated by unstable conditions. Under a depression air is rising, forming an area of low pressure at the surface. This rising air cools and condenses and helps encourage cloud formation, so the weather is often cloudy and wet.

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What Do We Mean By ‘pressure’

The Earth’s atmosphere exerts pressure on the surface. Pressure is measured in hectoPascals , also called millibars. Standard pressure at sea level is defined as 1013hPa, but we can see large areas of either high or low pressure. These areas are all relative to each other, so what defines a high will change depending on the area around it.

Cyclone Vs Anticyclone: The Key Differences

The following table highlights the key differences between a cyclone and an anticyclone.

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General Climate Characteristics Of The Ec Region

The majority of the land area of the EC countries is situated in the temperate latitudes where the basic airflow is frequently westerly. To the east and west of the EC region are areas that have contrasting physical characteristics thus the day to day weather and the long-term climate in Europe strongly depend on the direction from which the air comes, that is, from the Atlantic Ocean to the west or from the massive continental land areas to the east. Additionally, on the southern side of the EC countries is the Mediterranean Sea. Here the climate in winter is generally mild, even though there may be a lot of rain and storms for a period in the autumn and winter. This is in contrast to the generally wet, windy climate of the North Atlantic coastline and the cold winter climate of Central Europe dominated by the influence of the Siberian anticyclone.

Very cold air may also move towards the EC area from the Arctic. If this air comes directly from the north it has to pass over a relatively long fetch of comparatively warm sea, and the temperature of such strong, cold winter winds is not as low as that of the high latitude air that passes over the Scandinavian land masses to the northeast. The northeasterly wind in winter tends to be a desperately cold wind in northern Europe.

Kevin E. Trenberth, in, 2004

Does Low Or High Pressure Cause Storms

As air leaves the high-pressure area, the remaining air sinks slowly downward to take its place. That makes clouds and precipitation scarce, because clouds depend on rising air for condensation. This causes air to rise, producing clouds and condensation. Low-pressure areas tend to be well-organized storms.

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What Direction Do Anticyclones Move

In the northern hemisphere an anticyclone rotates in the clockwise direction, while it rotates counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. The rotation is caused by the movement of colder higher pressure air that is moving away from the poles towards the equator being affected by the rotation of the earth.

What Are Tropical Cyclones And Where Do They Originate

Tropical cyclones are intense circular storms that originate over the warm tropical oceans with more than 119 kilometres per hour speed and heavy rains. Mainly, the greatest damage to life and property caused not from the wind but from other secondary events including storm surges, flooding, landslides and tornadoes.

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What Is The Difference Between A Cyclone And Anticyclone

A cyclone is a pattern of winds that circulates a low-pressure system. It rotates counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. It is typically associated with wet and stormy weather.

An anticyclone is a pattern of winds that circulates a high-pressure system. It rotates clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. It is typically associated with dry and fair weather.

The difference in the direction the winds rotate in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere is a direct result of the Coriolis Effect, which causes the wind to deflect to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the right in the Southern Hemisphere.

Why these differences between a cyclone and anticyclone occur will become more evident as one takes a closer look at the formation and characteristics of each one.