Pressure system minima in the pressure field. The minima are called low-pressure areas, and the maxima are called high-pressure areas. A "High" is often shown as H, and a "low" is shown as L. Elongated areas of low pressure, or troughs, are sometimes plotted as thick, brown dashed lines down the trough axis. Isobars are commonly used to place surface boundaries from the horse latitudes poleward, while streamline analyses are used in the tropics. A streamline analysis is a series of arrows oriented parallel to wind, showing wind motion within a certain geographic area. Cs depict cyclonic flow or likely areas of
High-pressure area neighboring regions. These Highs change character and weaken once they move further over relatively warmer water bodies. Somewhat weaker but more common are high-pressure areas caused by atmospheric subsidence, that is, areas where large masses of cooler drier air descend from an elevation of 8 to 15 km after the lower temperatures have precipitated out the water vapor. Many of the features of Highs may be understood in context of middle- or meso-scale and relatively enduring dynamics of a planet's atmospheric circulation. For example, massive atmospheric subsidences occur as part of the descending branches of Ferrel cells and Hadley cells.