Trade winds Fontaine Maury collected enough information to create wind and current charts for the world's oceans. As part of the Hadley cell, surface air flows toward the equator while the flow aloft is towards the poles. A low-pressure area of calm, light variable winds near the equator is known as the doldrums, near-equatorial trough, intertropical front, or the Intertropical Convergence Zone. When located within a monsoon region, this zone of low pressure and wind convergence is also known as the monsoon trough. Around 30° in both hemispheres, air begins to descend toward the surface in subtropical high-pressure belts known as subtropical
Rain and a long frozen winter. Ice caps see no rain at all, making Antarctica the world's driest continent. Rainforests are areas of the world with very high rainfall. Both tropical and temperate rainforests exist. Tropical rainforests occupy a large band of the planet mostly along the equator. Most temperate rainforests are located on mountainous west coasts between 45 and 55 degrees latitude, but they are often found in other areas. Around 40–75% of all biotic life is found in rainforests. Rainforests are also responsible for 28% of the world's oxygen turnover. The equatorial region near the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ),